When the long-awaited dream dies, the reality begins to circle around us and encage us in the claustrophobic space of our fears and distorting anxiety.

Director’s Statement

“Baraa” is my first year film, produced at Royal College of Art, where I am currently doing my Master’s Degree in Animation in London. It focuses on the destructive influence of grief and loss on distortion of the reality around us. It is trying to analyze the impact of fixated longing for the idea that never came true and the obsession growing around it. The main character- the Woman- is suffering from claustrophobia and agoraphobia and is trying to isolate herself from the outside and society, in order not to confront the truth and to avoid facing the emptiness.

What was aiming to convey through this film is the simplest thing: to respect the other people’s reality and the way they perceive the world through the prism of their own past experiences that will never be the same as ours, as its as real to them and its influencing them just as much as ours do. The story was vaguely based on the experience of the woman who possibly suffered from stillbirth or who never managed to conceive a child.

Visually I wanted to picture the inside view of the psychosis, aiming for the attempt to try to understand the overwhelming feeling of anxiety and claustrophobia. For this reason the space in the film is inspired by the works of M. C. Escher and stylized in the fish eye method. The atmosphere of film was inspired by the works of Polish animator Piotr Dumala, and my own drawing and designing style was heavily influenced by the etchings of Fransisco Goya.