"Warsha" is a short film which explores masculinity and society's expectations through the character of a Syrian migrant working as a crane operator in Beirut.
The idea for the script came about in 2017, when the director saw a man standing on top of a construction crane praying from her balcony. This indelible memory led her to make a film about it.
The preliminary writing and research work took Dania Bdeir to the construction sites in Beirut, where she soon realised that the vast majority of the workers were undocumented Syrian refugees.
The director explains that due to the war in Syria, Lebanon has seen an influx of refugees over the years. They have been blamed for undermining the country's fragile economic system, leading to strained relations between Syrian construction workers and the Lebanese people.
Dania Bdeir's meeting with pop singer Khansa was a second trigger. Khansa had just released "Khayif", a song about stifling masculinity and societal expectations. She hired him for the film.
Since the release of "Warsha" at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, the short film has been screened at more than two hundred festivals in over sixty countries. It has won more than ninety awards (Jury Prize for International Short Fiction at Sundance, Best Fiction Award at the Tampere Film Festival in Finland, Festival Jury Prize at the Regard International Short Film Festival in Canada, ...).