Broken Keys

Jimmy Keyrouz's powerful, award-winning, factually inspired, moving, gut-wrenching, well-written, tension-filled, heartbreaking, violent, 110-minute, 2020 film based on his 2016 short movie Nocturne in Black in which a talented, endangered pianist (Tarek Yaacoub), who lives in a bombed-out building with his wannabe lawyer cousin (Sara Abi Kanaan) in a war-ravaged, ISIS-controlled Syrian town where music is forbidden, decides to fix his mother's bullet-ridden piano with the help of a Kurdish resistance soldier (Rola Beksmati) to sell to his shop owner boss (Mounir Maasri) to earn money to pay a smuggler so that he can hopefully twinkle the keys in an European orchestra and to help a resilient, orphaned boy (Ibrahim El Kurdi) have a life he deserves while working with the underground resistance to defeat terrorizing Islamist extremist fighters (Julian Farhat, et al.).

Broken Keys by Jimmy Keyrouz is wonderful and very well made. Cinematography and directing are at their best! The actors did a great job portraying the atrocities of the Syrian war and the terrorism that frightened the country. It's a story of hope portrayed by a piano, by the love of music not matter what! The movie wouldn't be complete without the music of the great Gabriel Yared! He doesn't disappoint!

The movie "Broken Keys" is a powerful representation of the fight between life and war, freedom and imprisonment, music and silence, dreams and nightmares...

Very well directed, amazing shots with excellence in production, Jimmy Keyrouz rocked it with his meticulous mind every single detail... All actors, especially Tarek Yaacoub and Rola Beksmati had a powerful presence, Even the secondary roles were taken by top-notch actors like Badeeh Abou Chakra and Adel Karam...

A movie that won't keep you indifferent... A movie about Music, Arts & Culture and how the instinct of LIFE is fighting over DEATH, war and destruction...

A definite must watch!

Not to be missed. Broken keys is filled with beauty, hope and resistance, in the face of obscurantism. A breathtaking journey, wonderfully served by performing actors embodying rich characters, highly convincing. A beautiful music facing the machine of war...