{"id":29893,"date":"2025-08-29T02:26:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/29893\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T02:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:26:08","slug":"the-station-follows-women-in-war-torn-yemen-fueled-by-sisterhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/29893\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Station’ Follows Women in War-Torn Yemen Fueled by Sisterhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tYemeni Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq<\/a>, who was Oscar-nominated in 2012 for her short documentary \u201cKarama Has No Walls,\u201d is in post-production on her fiction feature debut, \u201cThe Station,\u201d which the director will be taking to the Venice Production Bridge<\/a>\u2019s Final Cut workshop, running from Aug. 31 \u2013 Sept. 2.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film centers on a women-only fuel station in a segregated, war-torn town and follows Layal, a young woman confronted with her 12-year-old brother\u2019s growing desire to break free and become a man. When Layal\u2019s estranged sister unexpectedly shows up with a proposition for him, the siblings\u2019 relationship is put to the test.<\/p>\n

\n\tFeaturing a cast of mostly non-professional Yemeni actors, \u201cThe Station\u201d is written by Ishaq and Nadia Eliewat and produced by Screen Project and Georges Film, in co-production with One Two Films, Kepler Film, Barents Film, The Imaginarium Films, Setara Films and Ta Films. Eliewat of Amman-based Screen Project is the lead producer. Paradise City Sales is handling world sales rights.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Station\u201d \u2014 which Ishaq describes as \u201can ode to the people of Yemen\u201d \u2014 marks the latest cinematic chapter in the director\u2019s long-running relationship with the country of her birth. Ishaq was raised in Yemen but left at the age of 17 to live with her mother in Scotland. It was while she was there, working toward an MFA in filmmaking in Edinburgh, that the Arab Spring erupted in 2011. She immediately booked a flight to Yemen, arriving on the day that protests broke out in the capital, Sanaa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThough she would find work with foreign news agencies and documentary crews reporting on the revolution, Ishaq felt that their perspectives were inevitably \u201cfar removed from what the reality was.\u201d She had been making films in Yemen since 2007 and was determined to capture a more nuanced and complex portrait of the country. \u201cThere\u2019s always this othering that ends up happening [with foreign observers], even if it\u2019s inadvertent,\u201d she said. \u201cSo for me, it was very important\u2026to try to tell these stories from within.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat determination led to Ishaq\u2019s debut short documentary \u201cKarama Has No Walls\u201d (2012), about the 2011 massacre of more than 50 peaceful protesters by pro-government gunmen, which garnered nominations for a BAFTA and an Academy Award, and the feature-length documentary \u201cThe Mulberry House,\u201d a more personal family study set against the backdrop of the revolution, that premiered at IDFA in 2013.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Station\u201d was inspired by real-life events that occurred when Ishaq returned to Yemen in 2015. There, she encountered a women-only gas station in the heart of her hometown, Sanaa. It was populated by women from all walks of life and all corners of the country who \u201ccame together with one common goal \u2014 to sustain and support their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019d never seen anything like that before,\u201d said Ishaq. \u201cWomen always played a huge role in [Yemeni] society. But at this particular time, where men were either laid off their jobs, or they were drawn to the fighting, women really came to the forefront\u2026. They were still running the household but also trying to figure out ways to generate an income for their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile queuing for the scarce fuel that was a \u201clifeline\u201d for the war-torn populace, said the director, \u201cwomen chatted from their car windows, shared food and drinks, \u2018car-schooled\u2019 their children and exchanged stories.\u201d Despite the occasional dispute, the mood was lively and communal, with Ishaq describing it as \u201ca utopia within this dystopian world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cThe Mulberry House\u201d premiered at IDFA in 2013.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of IDFA<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director had originally hoped to film \u201cThe Station\u201d as a documentary, but there were too many practical obstacles to overcome. Fighting between various factions often made it too dangerous to leave the house, while many Yemeni were reluctant to appear in front of a camera, which frequently aroused suspicion. Ishaq cited an expression that was often used in Yemen during the revolution: \u201cCarrying a camera is more dangerous than carrying a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe returned to Scotland with a trove of material that she was struggling to make sense of. Meanwhile, the news reports from Yemen were giving a very different image of a country she knew in all its heartbreaking complexity. \u201cThe focus was always about the poverty of Yemen, and the destruction, and the devastation,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was less about the people, their humanity, their strength and resilience, within the context of a beautiful country that is in fact not poor at all, but one that has been exploited and impoverished over the decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt would take roughly eight years for that vision to find its form in a feature-length script, requiring Ishaq to jettison much of what she\u2019d learned as an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Once she managed to overcome the \u201ccreative paralysis\u201d that accompanied her \u201cdocumentary mindset,\u201d however, the director found it freeing to distill her experiences into a fictional narrative while also \u201ccreating something that is visually completely different from my documentary style.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Station\u201d is set in what Ishaq describes as a \u201cspeculative space,\u201d a universe that functions as a \u201cmicrocosm of Yemeni society\u201d but is nevertheless \u201cunbound by a specific time or place.\u201d Drawing on the country\u2019s past and present, it \u201creflects the gradual unraveling of the social fabric\u201d in a place fractured by war, foreign invasions and internal political strife, but refracts that shared history \u201cinto an absurd, sometimes exaggerated parallel world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt its heart, the story is not about politics. It is about people, their relationships, contradictions and resilience \u2014 what makes us not only Yemeni, but human,\u201d said Ishaq. \u201cIt is an ode to the people of Yemen who have endured and survived years of war with dignity, humor and strength.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yemeni Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq, who was Oscar-nominated in 2012 for her short documentary \u201cKarama Has No Walls,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,19,17,327,23745,11492,19063],"class_list":{"0":"post-29893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-sara-ishaq","14":"tag-venice-film-festival","15":"tag-venice-production-bridge"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}