‘Sink’ review: Visually striking Jordanian debut offers authentic depiction of mental illness

Dir/scr: Zain Duraie. Jordan/Saudi Arabia/Qatar/France. 2025. 88mins

Mother of three Nadia (Clara Khoury) can feel her teenage oldest son, Basil (Mohammad Nizar), drifting away from her. This shouldn’t be a problem – he’s about to graduate high school after all. But the wedge between Basil and the world is not just adolescent rebellion, but a spiralling mental health crisis. This impressive Jordan-set debut from Zain Duraie examines a mother’s anguish as the extent of her child’s problems becomes devastatingly clear and the picture’s claustrophobic tension builds to an explosive crescendo.

Strips back the taboos around mental illness

Duraie, who was one of Screen International’s 2024 Arab Stars Of Tomorrow and who has also worked as a production manager on films such as Palestine 36, cut her directing teeth with several short films; her second Give Up The Ghost, premiered in Venice competition in 2021 and won the Best Arab Short Film award at El Gouna. Sink (the Arabic title translates as ‘drowning’) is an accomplished feature debut which strips back the taboos around mental illness and is inspired by the director’s personal experiences. It also introduces Duraie as a notable talent with an eloquent grasp of visual language. Following its Toronto premiere and London berth, the film now screens in Red Sea competition; further festival play is likely, and the picture could find a home with a curated streaming platform or arthouse distributor.

Khoury, who also appears in a key role in The Voice Of Hind Rajab, gives a remarkable performance as a mother whose dogged advocacy for her son blinds her, initially, to the extent of his undiagnosed mental health issues. When Basil is suspended from school, for hitting a teacher, she unquestioningly accepts his side of the story – that the incident was an accident and the school’s response was an overreaction. Nadia’s narrative is that the school has failed her bright, unconventional child. 

We view the story through Nadia’s eyes and the expressive cinematography by Farouk Laaridh (whose previous credits include Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters) reflects this. The picture opens with a tight, boxy aspect ratio and neatly symmetrical framing within it. Our perspective of this story is filtered through the lens of a mother’s denial; essentially, we see what she wants to see.

Nadia has a special bond with Basil; she focuses on him at the expense of her other two children and she has a knack for connecting with her son and talking him down when the moments of mania kick in. But even to Nadia, it becomes clear that something is very wrong. There’s a pivotal moment when reality sinks in: the aspect ratio widens at this point and the camera gets more jittery. From this moment on, both mother and son feel increasingly vulnerable and small in the wide expanse of the frame. 

Water is a recurring motif in the picture. The film opens at the swimming pool, a place which provides a moment of calm in Basil’s besieged mental state. But, as the title suggests, water also provides a metaphor for the difficulties that threaten to submerge Nadia, stranding her from her friends and the rest of her family. Ted Regklis’s score picks up on the theme, with rippling, eddying piano music that flows between the scenes. 

What really impresses in Duraie’s directing choices is how much she manages to convey without dialogue. Repeated close-ups on the faces of both Khoury and Nizar express far more than the mother and son can bring themselves to say with words. The final shot – wordless, sustained and wrenchingly powerful – tells us, and Basil, that despite everything, Nadia’s love is unshakeable and unconditional.