Rasha

Joseph, a war photographer, returns from his last assignment, unable to forget the carnage. His wife and a therapist help him. His wife becomes pregnant, and he imagines the baby growing in her as a girl, playing in the fields, his lifeline out of his past. Tragically his wife miscarries. And the unborn daughter haunts him, reminding him what could’ve been.

  • Kasem Kharsa
    Director
  • Kasem Kharsa
    Writer
  • Jessica Landt
    Producer
    Küf/Mold, Hello I am David
  • Falk Nagel
    Producer
    Küf/Mold, Hello I am David, Takva
  • Maximilian Roesler
    Key Cast
    "Joseph"
  • Thomas Klees
    Key Cast
    "Doctor"
  • Laura Uhlig
    Key Cast
    "Sarah"
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Rasha
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    16 minutes 45 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 13, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    30,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Germany
  • Country of Filming:
    Germany
  • Language:
    German
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • Beleza Film (production company)
    Sales Agent
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Kasem Kharsa


KASEM Kharsa is an Egyptian-American filmmaker and painter based between the Middle East and United States. His experience as a design engineer and fine artist fostered his current career as a writer-director. His films are inspired by his own fragmented past and center on memory and survivorship. His work has been supported by both regional and international funding bodies and he is a fellow of the Sundance Directors lab, the Binger Film lab, Rawi Lab. He is currently preparing his feature debut I DREAMT OF empire.

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Director Statement

’Rasha’ came out of an interest in war photography and the brave souls responsible for witnessing and communicating carnage to the rest of the world. When we discuss post-tramautic stress, we usually refer to soldiers coming to terms with what they did, what they didn’t do. But non-combatants like war photographers are equally traumatized, as if their souls absorbed the graphic violence their cameras shot. ‘Rasha’ is a story about a man who comes back from war unable to function. He tries to push these violent memories of the past away by inventing a hopeful future, that in the end is too fragile for reality. My stories are preoccupied with trauma and survivors, and how the photographic arts and a story’s structure can communicate something of the malleability and permanence of memory. Because of the film’s brevity and fragmentary nature, we are unable to witness Joseph’s descent gradually and with clinical veracity - but
I feel we experience something more important: the sufferer’s point of view, his confusion and sense he is lost between the past, present and the future that could’ve been.