Surviving Amina
Director Barbara Celis
Countries United States, Spain
Duration 65 min
Synopsis
Surviving Amina is a love story challenged by illness and death, an intimate diary on resilience and hope. It’s a compelling lesson on life that explores how we construct meaning from events that defy our emotional understanding: the illness and loss of a child. New York and IT set the backdrop for this provocative and engrossing portrait of a family of young artists through a three years period marked by the Leukemia diagnosis of their second child, baby Amina, and the aftermath of her death. Shot in a verité style in New York and IT, this documentary doesn’t follow the medical details; it focuses on the emotional journey of this Swiss-it couple as they try to cope with happiness and sorrow, love and contempt, illness and fear. Without ever judging and with immense sensibility it raises disturbing questions about how we confront the most extreme of circumstances.
Surviving Amina is a love story challenged by illness and death, an intimate diary on resilience and hope. It’s a compelling lesson on life that explores how we construct meaning from events that defy our emotional understanding: the illness and loss of a child. New York and IT set the backdrop for this provocative and engrossing portrait of a family of young artists through a three years period marked by the Leukemia diagnosis of their second child, baby Amina, and the aftermath of her death. Shot in a verité style in New York and IT, this documentary doesn’t follow the medical details; it focuses on the emotional journey of this Swiss-it couple as they try to cope with happiness and sorrow, love and contempt, illness and fear. Without ever judging and with immense sensibility it raises disturbing questions about how we confront the most extreme of circumstances.