Basma is an Arabic family-centred film directed by Fatima AlBanawi, that is available on Netflix from 6th June 2024.
Cast And Characters
- Fatima AlBanawi as Bassouma or Basma – A PhD student who returns to her home in Jeddah after 2 years since the pandemic.
- Yasir AlSasi as Adly or father – He is Basma’s father who suffers from mental problems, and he keeps himself away from his family and does not want to take anybody’s help.
- Mai Hakeem as mother – She is Basma’s mother who has recently divorced her husband because he does not want to take medical help and lives in a separate house.
- Terad Sindi as Waleed – Basma’s brother who is always looking out for his younger sister and eagerly wants to help his father.
Plot Summary
The film follows Basma who left home for higher studies and returns home after two years. After she comes home she learns that her family has kept secrets from her all along. Her mother tells her that she divorced her father two months ago and now they live separately. And that her father is going through mental health issues but does not want to take help which was also the reason behind the divorce. Basma decides to move in with her father for as long as she is planning to stay in Jeddah and take care of him.
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Why Does Basma Want To Move In With Her Father?
Basma is a woman with a big heart who donated her hair to cancer patients. Her friends and family love her for her warm and welcoming personality. After two years of living in Los Angeles for her studies, Basma decides to return to her home in Saudi Arabia to celebrate Eid with everyone. But as soon as she returns she is exposed to unchangeable truths of her life that have been kept secret from her, that her father and mother are divorced and her father lives alone in their old house in Salama. She had always known about the strained relationship between her parents but didn’t expect her mother to leave her father because he didn’t want to take medications or go through treatment for his paranoid depression disorder. She thinks it is selfish of her mother to leave her father when he is going through a tough state. She even judged her relatives who think of her father as a ‘dangerous person’. Then she thought of living with her father because she believed that with love and attention she could make him get better.
How is The Condition Of Basma’s Father’s House?
The moment Basma entered she could see the decaying condition of the house. The messy surrounding condition of the house reflects the inner conflicts of the father. He is scared of bacteria infecting the house so he covers the air ducts with paper and newspaper. Her father is scared of being seen by the outside world so he covers the windows too, preventing sunlight from coming in, making the house filthy. Basma took the responsibility to clean the house and make it look more habitable. She thought if she worked hard she’ll be able to bring back the old good days.
Why Is Father Afraid Of Being Seen?
Father Adly is suffering from paranoid depression disorder. He thinks the whole world is trying to look down on him and is keeping an eye on what he does. So when Basma takes him to the doctor for his liver problems and the doctor keeps asking him private things he runs out of the room thinking his brother has sent this doctor to keep track of his younger brother’s life and the CCTV camera is for the same too. Father thinks everyone in his family, especially his elder brother, is a snake and narcissist. When father Adly, Basma and Waleed go to the fish market and accidentally meet his elder brother’s son, Adly thinks he has been sent by his father to keep an eye on him. Father even hates when he is called Mister and not a Doctor making him again believe people are looking down on him because of his weakness and illness.
What Was The Reason Behind Father’s Outburst?
Basma thought everything was starting to get better. Together Basma and Adly spent time cooking, planting trees and cleaning making the house feel lively. Adly starts listening to his daughter because she is treating him like a father and not as a patient. Waleed and his family even came to his father’s house for lunch and they spent the day talking. Just when Basma was starting to feel father was finally feeling better and without medications, she tore all the newspapers before leaving for a party with her friends.
The next day when she came back she found her father in a disheveled condition and the house upside down. She saw father was tearing his books to cover the window again. He hated when Basma tried to invade his personal space. According to him, Basma does not have the right to decide how he should live because she went away when he needed her the most. Adly thinks his elder brother and his family had sent Basma to live with him to treat him with medications. Adly even calls his daughter a narcissistic snake and that she wants to be with him, and take care of him to make herself look great in front of others.
Basma Ending Explained
Basma realized how hard it is for the father to realize the condition he is in. He does not want to get treated or feel better, he continues to live in insecurity and paranoia. Basma moves out of her father’s house to Waleed’s house. Waleed told Basma how their father in one of his outburst episodes tore his own grandson’s toy puppet.
One day Father suddenly falls sick and is sent to the hospital. Basma’s blind love for her father makes her oblivious of the reality that she started to blame everyone in her family including her uncle and mother for being selfish and for leaving father alone. But when she talked to her uncle she realized how little she knew about her family and regrets making those comments. She realized her uncle is not selfish, he always supported her father through every stage, while her mother was the one who suffered the most in the family. Basma realized that her love for her father would not be of any help if he did not want to be saved and open up to treatments. Basma returns to the U.S. with the hope that his father will understand how important family is and will start feeling better soon with the help of professional treatments.
