City in trance

City in Trance is a documentary that captures the resilience of people in Jordan navigating harsh realities at night or seeking a brief escape from their demanding lives.

I wasn't creating anything for a while, stuck in a rut. I don't know what pushed me but one night I just started walking through the neighborhoods of downtown after dark. There was so much happening at once fast cars, kids running around, shops opening and closing, loud chatter everywhere. Chaotic, and somehow the exact same every single night. At first I thought I was the one in a trance. Then I realized everyone around me was too.

When life turns into a daily economic fight, something in people just shuts off. You stop living and start surviving. That's what I'm after, the faces of workers, vendors and kids nobody looks twice at. How they carry themselves, the corners of the city they've claimed. It's all a record of holding onto identity while just trying to make it through.

So I followed the ones who don't get to stop when the sun does the sleepless people keeping the city fed and moving. And the ones chasing a few hours of escape from lives that leave no room for it during the day. It starts as early as sunset and runs late into the night, and I've shot it across Amman and Aqaba so far and I plan to keep going wherever it takes me in Jordan.

I move through these streets alone, as a woman, in places I'm not really supposed to be. That vulnerability isn't incidental to the project it's part of the point. The camera becomes both a way of witnessing the city's trance and of testing my own place inside it.