Céline Roustan
Maryam, now an empty nester, finally has time to focus on herself and decides to explore a desire she’s long held inside. In the middle of the night, at a motel, she meets up with a young female sex-worker. In her NYU undergraduate thesis film Kasbi, writer/director Farah Jabir crafts the sensitive yet complex coming-of-age journey of a woman mustering the courage to try to find herself.
“Is it ever too late to be the person that you want to be?“
There is one universal question at the center of this film: “Is it ever too late to be the person that you want to be?“. While midlife crises are often portrayed through the eyes of white male protagonist on-screen, we rarely see a layered and nuanced depiction from a brown woman’s perspective. Jabir subverts the common tropes of either fully liberated or completely repressed female characters, fleshing out her two protagonists outside of these one dimensional clichés, giving an immediate authenticity to their interaction. “Maryam and Aisha are an ode to Brown queer women, imperfect women, women who find themselves at moral crossroads”, she explains.
The situation at the heart of Kasbi is quite complex. “I am drawn to the gray areas of life”, the filmmaker admits and no matter what her protagonist chooses to do, we can feel the weight of Maryam’s decisions. “I was raised in a culture where decisions felt directly affected by the dogma of others, a common paradigm in many collectivist societies”, Jabir shares. Adding that “the choice to individualize is radical” and noting how “code-switching, by nature, defines my being—a means of survival I’ve adopted to appease those I love most”. While these themes are never addressed head-on, Jabir subtly infuses them throughout her screenplay, with either quick lines, reactions or narrative clues, grounding the film in an authentic and relatable reality.
Ultimately, the film is a face-off between two women who share a cultural background but stand as polar opposites – differing in age, life choices, the consequences of the choices and their levels of self-assurance. All set in this tiny motel room, where DP Luc Ung traps us within the restrictive frame ratio, positioning the camera very close to the actors. The growing intimacy between the two protagonists is not only explored narratively but also visually, as the frame composition draws into their evolving relationship.
Zina Louhaichy (L) & Anna Khaja star in Kasbi.
The premise for Kasbi is quite simple, yet the emotional depth here is dense, essentially leaving the performances to truly carry the layers of the screenplay. Jabir worked with both an intimacy director and a sex-worker consultant to allow actresses Anna Khaja and Zina Louhaichy to safely build the chemistry between their characters and the legitimacy of the story. Louhaichy as Aisha instantly conveys the self-confidence of her character, slowly revealing elements of her “true” self with sensitivity. While Khaja is incredibly compelling as Maryam, conveying the emotional weight of her character without a single word. Her nuanced portrayal navigates the paradoxes and contradictions of her character with authenticity, making her smile at the end – a fleeting moment of release – feel all the more powerful.
Kasbi had its World Premiere at the 2024 edition of Tribeca, and went on to be selected at many festivals including Frameline, NewFest and was included on 2024 Iris Prize shortlist. Jabir is currently developing a couple of films as a producer, including the Sundance/Film Independent backed Amerigirl. As a director, she is completing a short documentary about an anarchist punkhouse in Kuala Lumpur, and is about to shoot a new short film called Hantu – a dark fairytale inspired by Malaysian folklore, which is about sibling rivalry and how the things that haunt you can come back to bite you.