Effectively Banned by the Regime, a Syrian Film Resurfaces

On the phone from a hotel in Damascus, the Syrian filmmaker Ossama Mohammed was trying to paint me a picture of the view from his window. He could see Mount Qasioun, which looks out over the city. He could also see the presidential palace — “where the new person is spending his time now,” he said. It was evening there, and he could hear the sound of 100 mosques in prayer.

He and his wife, the opera singer Noma Omran, are “not people of religion,” he explained. But that sound moves them. “It’s not only the word of prayer,” he said. “The melody itself — it came from very deep culture, from multicultural Syria, from prehistoric Syria.”

Since 2011, he and Omran had been living in exile in Paris. After Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell in December, Mohammed said, his wife persuaded him that they should go there directly.

“The timing — it’s just amazing,” he marveled.

Technically, we were on the phone to discuss the new restoration of “Stars in Broad Daylight,” his 1988 debut feature, which will screen in the Museum of Modern Art’s annual film preservation showcase, To Save and Project, on Sunday and Jan. 28.

That the film is resurfacing now is pure coincidence. The restoration had its premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato, a festival of vintage cinema in Bologna, in June, when no one could have known that Bashar al-Assad would lose power. As it happens, “Stars in Broad Daylight” offers a harsh commentary on his father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000. More than one viewer has noted the resemblance between the former leader and the star.

The movie revolves around the complicated relationships of an extended family, the Ghazis. Khalid (Abdellatif Abdul Hamid), the most domineering of the clan — and the one who looks like Hafez al-Assad — has tried to orchestrate marriages for two of his siblings to maximize the Ghazis’ land ownership. After one bride runs from the double wedding, Khalid’s tyranny becomes even more overt.