Basma

Yes it has cliches and the phd pitch didn't make full sense,, but what exactly are you comparing it too? Because compared to other middle eastern productions this is definitely a showpiece!

Living in the middle east, I particularly enjoy the concept and the message it conveys because we still have people who don't believe in mental illnesses.

You need to understand the difficult job the producers had to balance out between what an Arab audience wants and what international audiences wants

I'm happy to see saudi actors doing their thing and I honestly don't see anything massively wrong with the acting,, like it wasn't distracting to me or anything

all in all, it was a pleasant watch and I was definitely hooked.

Boring, bad acting and cringey dialogue are just a few of the criticisms of this movie. The movie is suppose to tackle the difficult topic of mental illness but the storyline is a caricature of what someone thinks mental illness looks like. It feels like someone had some money and decided to make a "cool" movie set in Saudi Arabia with no context or insight as to the story they wanted to tell.

A few more points: Montana is a state, not a city. LA did not turn into a desert like Saudi Arabia after an earthquake in the 90s. If you're going to depict the main character as working towards a PHD in Environmental Engineering and she's talking about the topic, don't describe it in a nonsensical way. Have a point. All around disappointing.

Honestly , Amateur work.

The author of the story did not bother with any construction to the story narrative , so eventually you will get lost in every scene that you will never connect with the other , moreover there was no specific narrative construction for every character .. so good luck if you could understand this mess .

The first scene: The night party which ended suddenly finding themselves in a sheep barn!!!! What does that mean?

Scene Two: a construction site with Random bulldozers chosen to be the site of a romantic conversation. Then morning comes , and the workers begin working around them with their presence raising no questions!! What does that mean?

The third scene: It is the worst of all, when a woman spoke to her in the hospital in the most random way , with a meaningless conversation! Basma ask her: Is the juice machine working? " the random lady " answers her that some things cannot be fixed! Basma then ask her if there is any hope to repair the machine? She answers, "My name is Amal " hope in Arabic ". Do you think there is Amal?" What the hell is this nonsense?

When I got to the middle of the film, I wondered: Who is the producer who has the courage to produce nonsense like this? But I understood when I saw that the producer is the same as the author, writer, and the leading actress...complete nonsense.

I understand that this is the first baby steps for the Saudi Film industry. Taking that into account makes us understand the pitfalls of the movie. The storyline is weak. The actors reactions are sometimes are unrealistic to the situations they are trying to depict.

Also, I am always hesitant whenever someone is trying to project their own experiences, interactions, memories into a movie, I am not sure if the story has anything to do with Fatima own life story but that is the sensation I got.

Finally, I was not sure what the main message of the movie was, Fatima did iterate a message at the closure but I was not sure that the movie actually delivered this message.

At the end, I applaude them for the effort and for better future productions.

First time I see such a discrepancy between what I saw and the imdb rating of 4.4

For me a 6 or even 6.5.

Basma is a story about the difficult relation between daughter Basma who returns from her studies in Los Angeles, her father who has left the family and now lives alone and the rest of the family. She too has to learn that things are never black and white as we are used to see them. Good script, good acting, a glance at the life in a mostly unknown country make a nice movie albeit just a little slow in developing the story but I am not sure if faster would be better in this case. Would see again with pleasure after one or two years.