This work is by an artist from a nation whose citizens were being denied entry into the United States, according to a presidential executive order issued on January 27, 2017. This is one of several such artworks from the Museum's collection installed throughout the fifth-floor galleries and in the Agnes Gund Garden Lobby, and presented in our theaters, to affirm the ideals of welcome and freedom as vital to this Museum, as they are to the US.
Nujim An-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight). 1988. Syria. Written and directed by Ossama Mohammed. In Arabic; English subtitles. 105 min.
With Zuhair Abdulkarim, Sabah As-Salem, Saad Eddin Baqdoones. This is the debut fiction film of noted Syrian writer-director Oussama Mohammad, who is now in exile in Paris, where he recently collaborated with filmmaker Wiam Simav Bedirxan on Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (2014), a documentary "shot by 1,001 Syrians" that bears witness to the horrors of the Syrian Civil War. In a May 2006 New Yorker profile of Mohammed and other Syrian filmmakers, Lawrence Wright wrote, “Mohammed’s films, Stars in Broad Daylight (1988) and Sacrifices (2002), are merciless indictments of the Baathist dictatorship that has controlled Syria since 1963, when it came to power in a military coup. Both movies have received international acclaim; they were presented at the Cannes Film Festival, and Stars won first prize at the Festival of Valencia and at the International Festival of Rabat.” Nonetheless, neither of these films has ever been shown in its original director’s cut in Syria.