Stars in Broad Daylight (Nujum An-Nahar)

(1988, 105m, Arabic w/ English subtitles) dir Ossama Mohammed. Set in a coastal village northwest of Damascus, this essential Syrian film traces the catastrophic dissolution of the Ghazi family as they prepare for a double wedding celebration. Their preparations for the festivities culminate in a pressure cooker of underlying resentments and stifled desires. A richly layered allegory for the Ba’athist regime, the family is dominated by tyrannical patriarch Abbas whose obsession with power and control over his sister’s marriage mirrors the broader oppressive political landscape. The village and wedding become political theatres to explore the illusion of freedom and belonging under dictatorship. Told through stark imagery and with terrifying intimacy, Stars in Broad Daylight is a biting polemic against totalitarianism, which has never screened in Syria.

Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Ossama Mohammed. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
The restoration used the best surviving element outside Syria, a 35mm positive print acquired by a German television network in the 1990s. Ossama Mohammed approved the grading. Restoration work was completed in 2024 by L’Immagine Ritrovata.

In 2026, Mizna celebrates the twentieth edition of our flagship program, the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival. We mark this milestone with a year-long, multi-venue program, Looking Forward, Looking Back, which centers images from the history of SWANA filmmaking and our past festivals. Through this framework, we confront the visual record, demanding more from the archive than a sentimental look at the past. While SWANA films have been continually plundered, twisted, and aligned to colonial narratives, this year, Mizna’s film programming considers what overlooked, liberatory lessons the past might offer the present and future. With this goal in mind, we present selections by former Mizna festival curators alongside new restorations of SWANA cinema, drawing radical new meanings from the objects that remain.

7:00 $10