The Syrian Bride (2004)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Absolutely the worst movie.

Absolutely Fantastic

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

In a way, good movies allow you to check out different cultures and situations from your armchair. They could give you, for example, an idea of what it would be like as Brazilian gang member. The Syrian Bride lets you peek in on the Golan Heights, a part of Syria occupied by Israel. They won't let anyone move in or return to that enclave. A young Druze woman has decided to use her last chance of re-establishing herself after a failed marriage, she will leave the Heights forever to move to Syria proper for an arranged marriage with a TV actor she has never met in real life.We also get to meet, amongst others, the bride's father, who has served a long jail term for resisting the occupation, and his two estranged sons.In the anticlimactic end, the bride struggles to cross the border because the Syrian customs officer refuses to accept an Israeli stamp in her passport. When everyone is arguing, she slips across the border and into her new, uncertain life.

I want people to know the following:The link to the Amazon.ca DVD brings you to the US issue DVD being sold on Amazon Canada regardless of the fact that the best quality presentation of this movie is the Canadian issue. Go to the main home page of Amazon Canada then enter THE SYRIAN BRIDE it will take you to two issues. The DVD with the YELLOW cover is the better Canadian issue the one with the BLUE cover is the American one. This movie is so wonderful everyone should own it. Get the Canadian DVD it is beautiful and if you replace the black DVD box with a super clear DVD box you can take advantage of its lovely double-sided bilingual cover. H S Marks Manchester UK.

"The Syrian Bride" is one of the most amazing Arabic movies i have ever seen in my life. I would even give it a higher grade than "10" if I could. The plot is very real and serious, it sheds the light on a spectrum of elements and factors that constitute altogether the Druze individual who lives in Occupied Jollan Hieghts. Those people who suffer from the bitterness of BELOGING issue, are on display in this movie. On the one hand they are SYRIAN, but they feel isolated and secluded from their homeland on the other, and that's due to the fact that Israel has occupied their land , and Syria cannot get it back. In the movie there are some scenes of demonstrations organized by the local people of Majdal Shams implying their insisting need to re-belong to their homeland. However, they will never accomplish their need neither fulfill their dream as long as their green hills are occupied. The movie incarnates the the dilemma of belonging and the suffocating state of being under occupation.

After Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war, 17,000 ethnic Druze, whose people had been living in the area for centuries, suddenly found their lives fractured and their families divided by an impassable border. In spite of substantial economic and educational gains made under Israeli rule, the Druze of the Golan still consider themselves to be Syrians living under Israeli occupation. They do not intermingle with Israelis, refuse to hold Israeli passports, and live in their own villages. A French/German/Israeli co-production, The Syrian Bride tells the story of one such family as they prepare to attend their daughter's wedding on the Syrian border. It is primarily a comedy yet it is also a poignant drama that takes no sides but attempts to put the political turmoil in the region into a humanistic context.Mona (Clara Khoury), a young Druze bride is to be wed to Syrian TV-star Tallel (Derar Sliman) from Damascus, a man she has never met. Since neither country recognizes the other diplomatically, once the bride crosses the border to Syria, she will never be allowed to return to Israel and her wedding day, usually a day of great joy, may be one of her saddest. While the film tells us much about the sad realities of the political fragmentation in the Middle East, it is also a story with social and cultural ramifications. Mona's sister Amal (Hiyam Abbas), whose expressive face frames the film's beginning and end, is stuck in an unhappy marriage. She wants to attend Haifa University but is thwarted by her husband Amin (Adnan Trabshi) who is afraid of losing face in the village and of relinquishing "control".Mona's father Hammed (Makram Khoury), a pro-Syrian agitator known to Israeli police, is forbidden to travel to the Syrian border to say goodbye to his daughter. He harbors resentment and refuses to welcome his son Hattem (Eyad Sheety) and his Russian wife home from Moscow because he broke family tradition and moved away eight years ago. Another son, Marwan (Ashraf Barhom), a businessman, is welcomed by the family but is rejected by an angry former girlfriend, a French Red Cross worker (Julie-Anne Roth), who works in the village. Mona's character is mostly symbolic and she has little to say, yet the story of the film is written on her face and her lack of dimensionality is more than compensated for by the depth of the supporting characters, particularly Hattem and Amal.As these conflicts bubble under the surface, the situation becomes increasingly absurd as the wedding is threatened by bureaucratic intransigence on the border checkpoints between Israel and Syria. Mona's passport has an Israeli stamp on it and, according to Syrian regulations, anyone carrying a passport with an Israeli stamp is denied entry to Syria. Neither Israeli nor Syrian customs officials seem to know what to do and the prospective bride and groom are stuck in a no-man's land, reduced to communicating via bullhorns pressed against locked gates. The Syrian Bride may sound like an exercise in absurdity bordering on farce, yet for the family who may never see their child again, it is a drama of high seriousness. Whether you consider The Syrian Bride to be an allegory, black comedy, family drama, or political statement, the image of a girl sitting alone in a white wedding dress stuck between impenetrable barriers is one that remains.