Flana (2025) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for signs of the beginnings of life
Take a Drink: for signs of the ending
Take a Drink: whenever the narration kicks in
Take a Drink: for every story of abandonment
Do a Shot: cat!
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
“Flana” is an Iraqi term for forgotten or anonymous women, one that now stands in for generations of the repressed and disappeared.
Flana examines these tragic stories through the lens of one such girl she knew as a child- her 10 year old neighbor Nour, who one day disappeared without a trace.
A Toast
Debuting documentarian Zahraa Ghandour is telling a deeply personal story as she digs into the disappearance of Nour, an unwanted girl-baby who was passed around like a possession and not a person, one that nobody really wanted- abandoned at birth and then abandoned 10 years later by her adoptive parents.
This is just one of the stories she uncovers as she interviews the formidable women around her, from her Aunt Hayat with her steely, matter-of-fact presence to others who tell of their own abandonment and trauma in a society that simply does not value girls, and only values the women that they become in strict paradigms.
Ghandour deploys striking cinematography from the jump, full of long immersive shots, but what really ties her aesthetic and intellectual approach together is a late visit to the Cemetery of the Forsaken where girls murdered by their families lay under simple stone markers. Gravestones are not allowed and mothers cannot visit, but the greatest insult may be that these crimes go unpunished. In Iraq, male family members are not prosecuted for these so-called “honor” slayings.
Beer Two
This is slow and contemplative documentary filmmaking- it takes time to get used to the film’s rhythms.
Verdict
Flana is a damning and heartbreaking accounting of the cultural and historical reasons behind the disappearance of Iraqi women.
