Yara (I) (2018) User Reviews

Beautiful, yet flawed.

[Sachin_Chavan · 6/10 · 10 September 2019]

This is a movie about two pristine/virgin beauties - the girls and the valley. Both have only visitors, no inhabitants. Their common theme is desertion. Both have their bears which have to be chased away by rifles. Both are lonely. Wish the acting was up to the mark. The interaction between the joe and her granny lacks any intimacy. More like a documentary was shot with a local old woman and urban actress.

A sweet and melancholic tale of youth

[imkwantek · 10/10 · 19 October 2018]

What would a film look like if it were made without special effects, without "action", without "professional" actors pretending to be what they are not, without superheroes but with real people? Such film would look like Yara, a miraculous and limpid film that reveals the beauty of simple things which the dominant cinema considers as unworthy. Yara is a delicate film, a sweet and melancholic tale of youth, and a perfect antidote to the poison of formatted products that monopolize the screens around the world.

The lost innocence of cinema

[lupinoida · 10/10 · 22 October 2018]

In this new film by the French-Iraqi filmmaker Abbas Fahdel, we are faced with a radically simple approach, a story devoid of ornaments, built with the minimum necessary resources, where shines, for example, the austerity of the place and a narration based on very few camera movements, using medium and general shots to always keep the body of nature present. There is something very beautiful in the way the film finds a certain innocence lost in our approach to cinema, far from technical perfectionism and strict rules of the scenario, without forgetting to leave notes on the socio-political context and the influence exercised by religion. Continuing a heritage that goes back to Flaherty, Abbas Fahdel integrates documentary and fiction in the same layer, and moves between the appeal of Kiarostami's cinema and Bresson's cinematograph, and refines both styles to obtain a different one, very personal.

Summer with Yara

[heeti · 10/10 · 19 October 2018]

"Yara" invites us to participate in the daily life of the eponymous young girl, who lives with her grandmother in the Lebanese mountains. A tender summer love story, a triumphant celebration of youth and innocence, Yara makes us believe in the possibility of beauty and love. Abbas Fahdel - who wrote, shot, edited and directed the film - captures with great sensitivity and a minimum of narrative contrivance, the details of everyday life in an isolated farm and immortalizes the authenticity of the place and and the people who live there. As in his extraordinary documentary Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (2015), the Iraqi-French director manages to reveal the truth hidden behind a distant world and the faces of its inhabitants.

One of the most beautiful films you will see all year.

[MOscarbradley · 10/10 · 21 September 2019]

Filmed in the almost unbearably beautiful mountains of Lebanon, "Yara" is one of the most beguiling films you will see in a month of Sundays, setting out a way of life that might seem as remote as the place where director Abbas Fahdel chose to film it. Yara herself is a young girl who lives in the mountains with her aged grandmother. One day a handsome young man chances by and she is smitten but this is no conventional love story; indeed it's hardly a love story at all but an almost documentary-like account of a region and its people, (all the actors are non-professionals, essentially playing themselves), making do with what many of us might think of as very little yet living in what many of us might think of as a kind of paradise. This is one of the greatest of all films to deal with our place in the natural world, reminding us that great cinema need not necessarily announce itself with fanfares but with the quietude and simplicity of the gentlest of breezes.

Pure cinema

[paoloedipo · 10/10 · 5 May 2019]

Yara is a rare film in the way that it is not encumbered with a classic narrative. Its singular simplicity makes it not a hollow or empty film, but filled with a free space, where the spectator can freely enter and circulate with the characters. These actors and landscapes, so lovingly filmed, seem familiar to us, by the mere presence of a camera that seems inhabited by the belief in its own power. It's pure cinema, because the film, by its absolute faith in the cinema, proves that it does have a power of incarnation that has to do with magic. Yara is the only film I know which, starting by the most concrete reality, reaches a poetic metaphor, almost passing, to put it quickly, from the most raw documentary to the purest fiction.

Watching a Couple Walk and a Grandma Stare at Chickens

[andrewestrella · 15 November 2018]

I will stand in my belief that Yara is a horrible film, even if it is kind of funny. This was the third film I saw at AFI Festival this past Wednesday, and man, was I annoyed, bored, and disappointed. Coming from Israel, I was assuming Yara would be a fascinating look at boy meets girl, but giving the unique perspective of having the two come from two completely different backgrounds (the girl from nature and the guy coming from the city) really made me intrigued.

However, Yara is not only the worst film I saw at the festival, but it is probably one of the least enjoyable experiences I have ever had in general. The main character, Yara, is portrayed to be this perfect Virgin Mary type of women, who can commit no harm, is one with nature, and is endlessly moral. But I think doing so makes her completely unlikable. All she does is smile, never says any really meaningful dialogue, and the only thing I got from her character is that she likes to do laundry. And do not even get me started on Elias, her stupid boyfriend who makes the most dumb and goofy faces that I have ever seen. I do not even speak Hebrew or Arabic, or whatever it was, but I could totally tell that the acting was awful. Oh, and the grandmother just sitting there staring out into the distance and the goats, and looked totally bored, was exactly how I was throughout my watch of the film.

Did you guys known that eleven people walk out of my screening? I really wanted to leave too, but I am not a quitter. But as for the people who stayed, most did not like it, but they could all unanimously agree that the cinematography was excellent. I am sorry, but you are incorrect here. The cinematography was ugly as hell. It was filmed like a damn documentary, but it was trying to be a narrative-based film, and it just looked goofy. Even the camera was shaking when it was supposed to be steady, and it was just simple shot-reverse-shot. Like what the heck?

Did anybody else think the film was shot like a stage play too? Like seriously? People would come out of nowhere and just start talking to Yara. It is almost like the director would call them out, and they would just start walking up the mountain, and start initiating the conversations. Whether it was her boyfriend, random people giving food, or family, none of the conversations felt natural because they would just come out of nowhere.

As for the chemistry between Yara and Elias, it was goofy and genuinely horrendous. The lines that he uses to win her affection are honestly bad. Like I understand that she is secluded in the mountains, but couldn't her standards be a little bit better? I honestly saw a couple in front of me that were probably on one of their first dates; they were kissing, holding each other, and were flirting with each other a lot. It was far more romantic than anything on screen. Go couple that sat right in front of me. Hope everything goes well.

Do not watch this film. It is boring, with half of the shots showing grandma staring at goats or the couple walking throughout the mountains. It will make you fall asleep. It will make you cringe. I wish it was so funny that it was good, but it was more boring than anything.

By the way, if anybody is curious why I gave this half a star, it was because there are some really cute orange and white tabby cats. They were entertaining. Anybody notice how Middle Eastern countries love these cats so much? I love cats too, but not this movie.