Next up is the 2015 World Cinema Documentary Competition, which begins with Canada’s THE AMINA PROFILE, Sophie Deraspe’s unraveling of the strange case of a Syrian woman’s disappearance.
Sundance Program Description:
“Thanks for adding me. You are absolutely gorgeous XOXO.”
“Thank you Amina. You are quite hot yourself.”
There is no indication that this typical online flirtation between two strangers would turn into a case of shocking international intrigue. For months, Sandra in Montreal and Amina, a Syrian-American, bond romantically and intellectually. Encouraged by Sandra, Amina launches a blog called “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” representing a marginalized voice in the Middle East on politics, religion, and sexuality. Rapidly garnering worldwide attention, Amina becomes something of a star blogger. But when Syria enters the Arab uprising of 2011, Sandra receives word that Amina has been kidnapped, and soon the search for Amina becomes a global concern and an even larger mystery to solve.
Filmmaker Sophie Desraspe creates a hypersexualized tableau and follows Sandra from Montreal to Istanbul to Tel Aviv to Chicago to reconstruct and unravel a fascinating love story-cum-political thriller. THE AMINA PROFILE is truly a tale of our times – one that starts and is solved via the Internet – and brings into question the ethics, accountability, and very human consequences surrounding it.
Some Background:
Montreal-based Sophie Deraspe is best known for most recent fiction film, VITAL SIGNS, which screened extensively around the world, including Montreal, Edinburgh, and Turin. Her producers are Esperamos Films’ Isabelle Couture, and the National Film Board of Canada’s Nathalie Cloutier. The latter’s most recent project, THE WANTED 18, debuted at Toronto.
Why You Should Watch:
Deraspe quickly draws the viewer into Sandra and Amina’s long-distance romance and into Amina’s larger activist network – relationships both enabled by instantaneous global communication and subject to its virtual restrictions, particularly in a volatile region that sees revolutionary change on the horizon. As Amina vanishes under troubling circumstances, the film suddenly morphs into a missing person’s case, testing the resilience of the bonds she forged with Sandra and others in her cyber-world as the political becomes immediately personal.
More Info:
For more information, visit the film’s Facebook page. Check out the trailer and Deraspe’s Indiewire filmmaker interview. For screening dates and times at Sundance, click the link in the first paragraph. To experience the festival through the eyes of this year’s filmmakers, follow my Sundance filmmaker class of 2015 Twitter list.
what (not) to doc 