Another Country

Director: Sherif Alabede

Another Country

Director: Sherif Alabede

Director: Sherif Alabede

In 1956 Mississippi, an interracial couple sought seclusion to safely welcome the birth of their child. Their sanctuary is disrupted by local authorities, revealing a story of forbidden love in a racially divided world. Based on Natasha Trethewey’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poems, Native Guard, the film is an emotional journey about two lovers in a forbidden romance.

 

 

The story revolves around the main characters’ feeling of being ill-suited for the reality they’re perpetually trying to escape. The opener ‘In Peril’ underlines the burden of an era that conspires against them. As the music unfolds, it echoes a poignant reverberation of time—a haunting sensation that resonates within the listening experience.

The score slowly dives back into the vacuum of silence, only to blossom through a dialogue between a flute and a string orchestra that is decidedly beautiful. Focusing on the richness of timbre and tone found in the orchestration of the score is crucial, fortifying the suspense that synth patches alone can’t achieve here. Reinterpreting archetypal, classical motifs over heavily processed percussion, reveals a soundscape which aims to balance a focus on the historical period while remaining relevant to the present.

 

There’s little use of human voice; it’s deliberately kept aside until the final track, where the score ends with a lullaby – a female hum that pushes against the condemnation, manipulating the anxiety depicted in the film, slowly and with patience.