“A bold, visual masterpiece that shows how female freedom drowns in honor and tradition.”

Yasser (Yasser Al Mawla) is determined to find his cousin, who loved a man she could not have because he was promised to another. And now she has vanished. Fog seems to hang perpetually over the valley, and maybe he is distracted by the conversation with a friend he picks up along the way; whatever the reason, Yasser hits someone with his car, a man he insists came out of nowhere. But the damage is done, and when his victim dies of his injuries, the man’s tribe demands retribution. Yasser’s sisters Rim (Rim Al Mawla) and Jawaher (Jawaher Al Mawla) become bargaining chips and are sent to the other tribe’s sheikh, while their father shutters up their home and takes his family out of the valley. Alone among people they do not know, Rim and Jawaher are confronted with an impossible choice that will tear the two women apart forever, and will make a desperate Rim question how much her freedom is worth.

A pickup truck set ablaze, a girl disappearing in the night. A chain of events is set in motion, spiraling out of control until it ensnares two women, innocent of anything but being women. In Palestinian director Rakan Mayasi’s impressive debut Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep, honor and tradition rule. Set in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where life still follows the rural rhythms, he sets his gaze on the plight of the women who have to navigate an existence rooted in patriarchy and tribal codes. Inspired by his grandmother, who was forced to get married at age 14, Mayasi depicts a world where men lead and women follow, and where blood feuds are a way to settle disputes. Where marriage is a sacrifice, and women have no say in the matter. For the rebellious Rim this is hard to accept; with a secret admirer of her own, she dreams of a life away from all this. The more conforming Jawaher understands that this is the way things are, and have always been; she accepts her fate in silence. Two caged birds, one moved from one cage to another, the other desperate to spread her wings.

Mayasi’s cinematic language emphasizes this cage. Shooting in Academy ratio and thus already hemming the women in, his compositions often place them off-center, towards the edge of the frame, creating negative space to further isolate them and convey how they have to face the world alone. How different this is when Mayasi introduces his heroines: a smiling Rim in close-up, out in the fields of the valley, and Jawaher, a nurse, in a handheld shot that suggests a certain freedom. It doesn’t take long for the dread to set in when Yasser’s inadvertence sets things in motion and determines the fate of his sisters. Mayasi’s framing becomes more precise, slow zooms enhancing the feeling something bad is going to happen. At times the camera work (by Belgian cinematographer Pôl Seif) verges on the self-indulgent; a rotation of the camera as it focuses on the two women overhearing a conversation about the other tribe’s demands is visually potent and signals their lives are about to change dramatically, but it is quite showy. Yet combined with the ambient score, the visuals set an incredible mood. On a few occasions Mayasi chooses to let important plot points unfold off-screen, the impact of the empty space left behind heightened by the emotional dialogue outside the frame; these moments too turn up the tension without having to rely on the visuals of the drama unfolding. This is a director who is a master at hiding just enough to keep you spellbound, moving the story along at a slow but deliberate pace. He keeps the knot in your stomach until the film’s final release in a wide shot that screams ‘freedom’ and delivers a moment of visual magic that will be long remembered.

Only once does the film abandon this visual tone that is so reminiscent of the works of Theo Angelopoulos, in a beguiling slow-motion wedding scene that is wordless save for fragments of lines accompanying the intoxicating music. Perhaps it’s the dancing around a bonfire that makes for the easy comparison to Portrait of a Lady On Fire‘s signature scene, but it has a similar transfixing quality. It is a moment of cinema magic one rarely sees in a debut, a mark of something special. It shows Rakan Mayasi in full control of his craft; no wonder he had the confidence to wait 20 minutes before putting in the title card. With Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep Mayasi has delivered a film in which tone is congruent with theme, a bold, visual masterpiece that shows how female freedom drowns in honor and tradition.