Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Taste of Cement" is a new Arabic-language movie from 2017 that has actually received a pretty great deal of awards recognition all over the globe in the last couple months. It is the second full feature film by director Ziad Kalthoum and definitely his most seen and most successful at this point. At 85 minutes, it is not a long film by any means, but sadly it does feel a lot longer than it actually. The film takes us to Beirut where we follow a few Syrian construction workers and witness their every day work at the conctruction site raising new buildings. while in the distance we find out and see how their homes are bombed. This paralllel is an interesting one that had me curious about the project, but eventually I must say that the material (or at least the way it was depicted here) simply did not impress me at all. This could have been, maybe should have been, one of these 30-minute HBO documentaries that get in at the Oscars frequently, but for almost 1.5 hours it is simply way too thin. There is hardly any narration, no interviews and it is all about what we see instead, like the workers sleeping at night during those few moments when we did not see them during their profession. On a lesser note, in terms of what we hear, it is about explosion sounds much more than about people actually talking about their inner states or why they do what they do. There is also no personal fate involved really. We find out nothing about the workers as individuals and instead they are portrayed as one grey mass, one group of people that exists, but there is nothing or nobody that stands really out from them. Aside from that, I felt that the mere construction site recordings were just way too much overall and that you could have cut at least half an hour of these, probably considerably more as really the war background and historic context was hardly there to make any difference as if you were watching workers on a construction site near your home wherever you come from. The longing/sadness aspect felt underwhelming too, and be it only because it was virtually impossible to make a connection with these men. They felt like fish in a pond, but not in a pond of sadness and desperation the way it should have been. The scene near the end with the saved child from the ruins is one that felt very much for the sake of it, maybe to include some tangible drama eventually and be concrete and precise for once in the face of all the vagueness that comes with this film. So yeah, I was mostly disappointed here I must say. The general idea in terms of absurdity and the Sisyphus work aspect in the sense of moving where war is over until they are needed elsewhere is interesting, but just cannot justify the entire project. I give this movie a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

shatha-42159 A group of Syrians have escaped their war torn country to the safety of Beirut, Lebanon, where they work on a construction site. As a result of a government curfew on refugees, their only contact with the outside world is a hole in the concrete through which they pass to begin their day at work. That is how the film is billed but it's reality offers much more depth and insight into the turmoil suffered by Syrian refugees.Narrated by one of the construction workers, the film is unique in the fact that we are never truly introduced to the protagonist, nor is there dialogue amongst the characters. The 85-minute film is simply explained using a few sentences interspersed between heavy imagery and symbolism.Spanning the lifecycle of concrete, the film shows the daily life of the construction workers who live in the basement of the site on which they are building a 22-floor skyscraper.We are told that at first they believed that they lived below Beirut for 12 hours of the day and soared above it for 12. However it is evident as time passes that this is not the case; Beirut is always rises above them even as they stand tens of metres above its coast.The workers are trapped on site and live in squalor. They have no hopes and appear to go about their lives almost in robotic style which is broken only by nightly updates regarding the death and destruction taking place in their homeland.The narrator relays the story of his relationship with his father who also worked as a construction worker in Beirut. Concrete has featured heavily throughout his life, he explains, "we could taste the concrete in every bite my father fed us".After his father retired and returned to Syria to rebuild the family home, the war broke out and once again the lead character was forced to eat concrete, this time as a result of an air strike which left him buried under rubble.Throughout his narrative the damage caused by the war, and the subsequent collapse of piles of concrete, are juxtaposed against the work at the construction site and how new lives were being built in Lebanon as lives were being destroyed across the border.The emotive footage will strike a cord with viewers, in particular scenes of children crying out from beneath the rubble as rescue workers use their bare hands to claw threw the damage to find them.The Syrian tragedy, loss of life and subsequent isolation suffered by refugees are apparent throughout the film, while the footage used is hard hitting and informative.The film however is slow, long and drags out. Perhaps 20 minutes are sufficient to highlight the points raised!But in the end, the message is clear: "Since the end of the war Beirut keeps building", let's hope Syria gets the opportunity to do the same. And soon!