The Translator (2020)

A seemingly innocuous slip-up in an interview during the 2000 Olympics ends Sami Najjar’s (Ziad Bakri) career as a translator, and forces him into hiding in Australia. 11 years later, troubled about the fate of his brother Zaid, a staunch anti-government protestor who has gone missing, Sami is forced to travel back to a Syria in the grip of the Arab Spring, where the regime has resorted to ruthless violence and oppression to shut down the insurrection; where he is still unwelcome.

The slip-up in question? The interviewee, Syrian boxer Moneeb Bitar (Ramzi Maqdisi), states that Syrians are in mourning after the death of President Hafez al-Assad earlier that year. Sami translates this almost completely faithful, but with one small addition: “some” Syrians.

Rana Kazkaz and Anas Khalaf’s latest feature film The Translator exposes the tyrannous rule of Hafez’s son and successor Bashar al-Assad, especially in his brutal suppression of the 2011 Syrian Revolution. From extrajudicial arrests of protest organisers and others considered undesirable by the state, to intrusive surveillance, President Bashar al-Assad’s administration is rife with human rights violations, mirroring his father’s crackdown of Islamist opposition groups in the 1980s.

Both Sami’s father and older brother vocally condemn the regime; both are deemed personae non gratae by pro-Assadists, and are thrown into the backs of lorries in broad daylight to never be seen again. Sami shares their contempt, but he is a translator at heart, and finds himself torn between joining the fight for liberation and staying under the radar. “A good translator,” The General (Carlos Chahine) pronounces, “is supposed to seem invisible.” Seeing the cruelty inflicted by the government upon his fellow countrymen, Sami becomes increasingly less sure whether he can continue to stay invisible.

On the whole, the acting was superb, albeit with moments where the actors delivered less emotion than I believe the scene demanded – Sami’s reaction to his father’s capture at the start, to name one. The performance of Yumna Marwan as Ziad’s partner Karma, as well as the extras, excellently captured the constant tension in the relationships between fellow Syrians, wary of trusting a double agent.