The Night tells a personal story about the history of Syria, up to the moment the neighbouring country of Israel was founded. The grave of a man – a member of the Palestinian resistance – lies in El Quneitra, a Syrian town on the Golan Heights – a town that was destroyed by the Israelis in 1967. The man’s son Mohamad Malas tries to piece together his father’s past, helped by the scattered memories of his mother. The images in the film that illustrate the father’s story are stylised and deliberately overly beautiful. For Malas, this is a way to banish the shame and humiliation that adhere to the image of his father and the town, occupied by the Israelis. An exceptional look back at another period of struggle and bloody resistance in Syria. The director Malas is seen as the first film auteur in his country, and is still active as a filmmaker in Syria, in spite of the current civil war.
