1. Bus Ride 1 (02:02)
2. Dream (01:05)
3. Changing Room (01:49)
4. Bus Ride 2 (01:29)
5. At Madame Jiji’s Place (01:12)
6. Broken Dream (01:18)
7. Demonstration (01:40)
8. The Soldier (01:20)
9. Samir (01:11)
10. The Wedding (03:21)
The film, originally titled Mon Tissu Préféré, is the feature debut of Syrian director Gaya Jiji. Nahla is a young unmarried woman who leads a life doleful in a Syrian suburb, at the sides of her mother and her two sisters. The day where they presents Samir, a Syrian expatriate from the United States in search of a wife, she dreams of a better life.
From an early stage in the writing process, Kleinschmidt had a clear idea of what he wanted to achieve with the score: ‘The main goal when writing this score was to get closer to the leading character, her thoughts and feelings. The music became Nahla's inner voice, as Gaya, the director, put it.’
His inspiration for the music originated from the combination of the main character's story and the sad reality in which that story is set: ’What inspired me the most, was to just watch Nahla and try to see through her eyes how both she and her environment are changing throughout the story and how she is struggling with that. And of course, the documentary scenes of real bombardments on Syrian cities, people screaming and raw violence had a special impact on me. It shows how this story is related to awful real-life events, happening these days.’
Kleinschmidt went the extra mile to create a soundtrack perfectly reflecting the story lines and motives. ‘Nahla has a recurrent fantasy of her being together with the man of her dreams. For those ‘dream scenes' I opted for a pure and simple piano pattern, combined with a conversation-like duet between a Violin and a Cello. These dream sequences, in combination with my corresponding score, recur several times throughout the story. It almost has no variations because I wanted to keep it pure, like Nahla’s dream’, he explains. ‘On the other hand there is that intimate sound of a small string quintet which I recorded with the Berlin Music Ensemble in the beautiful Meistersaal (known chamber music hall) of the Emil Berliner Studios in Berlin. The parts with smaller instrumentation in particular, bring in a certain personality which sounds more like a voice rather than an instrument. That made it possible for me to put Nahla’s thoughts to music.’
Although the whole story is set in Syria, Peer Kleinschmidt did not create a score which focuses on typical Arab or Syrian sounds. ‘Gaya and I never felt that it was necessary to imitate any of that music to create a connection to Nahla’s story. Even the opposite. I really believe it will help people to understand Nahla’s story on a different, rather international level, instead of restricting this character to a specific culture.’