THREE PROMISES (Yousef Srouji, 2023)
Review by Rory Carroll
Suha Khamis, filming herself in Three Promises
Three Promises is a film made by Yousef Srouji, that’s undeniable, he has weaved together this narrative beautifully and we hear his voice throughout, but, it’s also a film made by Suha Khamis, his mother, 20 years previously.
The film is made up of home footage Suha shot while living in Palestine, during Israeli army retaliation following the second Intifada in the West Bank in the early 2000s, the film doesn’t just sometimes refer to this footage, it is this footage. We see her family: her husband, her daughter and her son, Yousef, the director of Three Promises, laughing and playing, cowering in fear, arguing, sleeping, celebrating, moving away, crying and simply, living.
Yousef Srouji with his father and sister, Three Promises
This unprecedented look at a family means it’s often stark, joyful, honest and heartbreaking. When a documentarian visits or even more so, encamps themselves with a subject, there is always the risk the subject acts in a way, dishonestly, because of the presence of the camera, and because they know that the footage will one day make a film. Here it seems the camera is seeing completely honestly, there is presumably no expectation from the children or anyone else featured, that this footage would have one day make up a feature film and the documentarian is of course, their mother.
Some of the most poignant and truthful scenes come as Suha, films Israeli forces attacking in the distance. From the outside, we hear gunfire, emergency services and bombs, and from the inside, we hear her children begging her to move away from the windows or asking if the gunfire is close. It’s raw and real. As the audience, we’re both seeing a tragedy in the distance, an exchange of fire, the sound of a bomb, the images that TV news and social media may have dulled people's hearts to, but also simultaneously being reminded of the real actual people; the families and the children, the fear they feel, those whom the brutality is being inflicted upon, this makes it extremely powerful. Eventually, the family hunker down under their stairs for safety, despite Suha telling her children they are not in danger. As the film goes on we see the violence get closer and closer to the family and their home, until it unnerves even the stoic Suha.
Suha filming the violence, Three Promises
She makes a promise to God, that if her family survives, she’ll move them away, she revises this deal with God a few times until eventually she is left with no choice, they must leave.
Alongside the heartache and pain that the home footage captures, it also captures resilience, a resilience that comes from children continuing to joke despite hiding from bombs, from joy sprouting up out of times of extreme woe, friendship and play in the face of oppression and violence.
At the end of the film, we see Yousef and his mother return to their homeland. They discuss their memories, they’re able to laugh and joke but acknowledge these memories, these traumas, we’ve watched as home footage, have been repressed. Except they haven’t, the camera has immortalised them. However it does not trap them in the past, it has allowed them to honestly share their own story, Yousef is able to finish what his mother started, reclaim these memories and traumas and fashion from them a film that truly matters in a way very few films do in comparison.
