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Movies like Three Songs without Z. (2022)

A video portrait of Zakaria Almoutlak, a sculptor and media activist from Homs, Syria, who fled the civil war in 2015. A triptych of songs, co-written with Almoutlak and performed by singers Aliana de la Guardia and Ganavya Doraiswamy, evoke memories of his fractured homeland, from his imprisonment by the Assad regime to dancing at a wedding under bombardment. News footage, YouTube videos, and speculative reenactments staged by Pandian and Zins-Browne supplant a missing visual record of Almoutlak’s experiences. Presented in a vertical format (ubiquitous in everyday life, but unique in the cinema), “III Songs without Z.” renders the moments of joy and pain that are so often edited out of stories of survival.