When a missile destroys her family’s apartment, teenager Zeina and her mother believe her father Mutaz will finally concede that they need to leave the devastated Syrian capital. But Mutaz (Samer al-Masri, The Worthy) refuses to become a refugee, resolutely patching-up the family’s home with bedsheets. With the interior becoming the exterior, Zeina and her mother are more exposed to the outside world than ever before.

The invitation of a rope through a hole in her blasted ceiling leads to an encounter with the neighbour’s son Amer, to stars, imaginary fishing and movies. Displaced Syrian filmmaker Kaadan observed that it has taken years to bring lightness to devastating memories (she quotes Twain’s ‘humour is tragedy plus time’) and here she creates a film of delicate, melancholic charm. With Zeina’s new freedoms, there is also loss: of a life, a home and a homeland.