{"id":56581,"date":"2025-11-08T23:25:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T16:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/?p=56581"},"modified":"2025-11-08T23:25:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T16:25:20","slug":"the-orchards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/film-review-en\/the-orchards\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Cacti are Drifting Beneath the Blue Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For more than 200 years, olive trees and an old cacti around Damascus were devoured by excavators under the orders of foreman Bashar Al-Assad. <em>The Orchards<\/em> (Antoine Chapon, 2025) emerges as a kaleidoscope of the reflections and resistance of the people of Damascus. Although Bashar Al-Asaad\u2019s dictatorial regime has fallen, there remains a need to fill the void that the revolution created with meaning, as a momentum to restore those who have lost everything: their homes, their families, and their lives.<\/p>\n<p>The film offers an exposition of capturing activism through a digital model blueprint of the Marota city development, a state-of-the-art urban development project built on the former expulsion zone of Al-Basateen in Damascus. Director Chapon and the Al-Basateen community, who have been victims of eviction, tell their story in opposing Marota\u2019s three-dimensional design with graffiti patches and \u201creplanting\u201d of olive, cactus, pear, pomegranate, and mulberry trees. A storm of anger and sorrow erupts as we encounter the songs and banners of the Syrian Revolution, carried with faceless fists. The shot then moves to a documentation of settlements and fertile plantations and vegetation, depicting a contrast to the previous footage of excavators grinding and uprooting them.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-56578 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-Orchards-Still-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-Orchards-Still-3.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-Orchards-Still-3-500x281.jpg 500w, https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-Orchards-Still-3-1280x720.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-Orchards-Still-3-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Strips of heavy tape were fixed to the floor in the shape of a house, stirring a woman\u2019s sense of longing for what was lost.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWe will finish our story, and we will come back,\u201d \u201cThe empty cities don\u2019t breathe, we will come back.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One by one, it will eventually come back. The cactus, in fact, will grow together. Amid the concrete walls, asphalt roads, barren infrastructure, and drifting beneath the blue sky of Damascus. (Gantar Sinaga) (Ed. Vanis\/Trans. Shafira Rahmasari)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Film Details <\/strong><br \/>\nThe Orchards (Al Basateen)<br \/>\nAntoine Chapon | 25 min | 2025 | France<br \/>\nOfficial Selection for <strong>Perspektif<\/strong><br \/>\nFestival Film Dokumenter 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For more than 200 years, olive trees and an old cacti around Damascus were devoured by excavators under the orders of foreman Bashar Al-Assad. The Orchards (Antoine Chapon, 2025) emerges as a kaleidoscope of the reflections and resistance of the people of Damascus. Although Bashar Al-Asaad\u2019s dictatorial regime has fallen, there remains a need to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":788,"featured_media":56575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"edition":[781],"class_list":["post-56581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-review-en","edition-ffd-2025-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56581"},{"taxonomy":"edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/edition?post=56581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}