HOPE, according to St Paul, is for things unseen. If so, Nezouh (Cert. 12A) is a perfect demonstration of it. Soudade Kaadan sets her award-winning movie in a battle-scarred Damascus where no one gets killed. Violence and fear hover like angels of death, but, paradoxically, we are invited to consider how the human soul finds moments of grace amid the mundane and the horrific.

With his wife, Hala (Kinda Aloush), and 14-year-old daughter, Zeina (Hala Zein), the kindly, if patriarchal, Motaz (Samer al-Masri) insists on staying in their home. When a bomb rips large holes in the roof and walls, it remains a case of father knows best. “God must love us to save our house,” he declares. Just about everyone else has fled the neighbourhood as hostilities increase dangerously. For Motaz, it is a matter of principle. Refugees are displaced people, and to be such is to lose any sense of who you are. Nezouh is Arabic for the displacement of soul, water, and people. The irony is that they are already displaced persons, because the old certainties of once familiar surroundings have been removed.

Hala and Zeina offer an alternative viewpoint. They embody St Augustine’s notion that Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger and Courage. The mother majors on anger at the way things are, but much of the narrative concerns itself with Zeina’s courage to see that they do not remain as they are. She dares, through the power of imagination, to dream of a more ethereal sense of place than the present reality of domestic captivity and deprivation.

Zeina is assisted in this by Amer (Nizar Alani), who dangles a rope from the open roof. Climbing up to him, she begins to see a whole new world, one transcending the rubble-strewn streets. She delights in skimming pebbles in the sky, as if it’s water. Amer introduces her to fishing in thin air. With his encouragement, Zeina is able to glory for the first time in a horizon studded with stars. Amer represents a future role model for Syrian masculinity, one that doesn’t have to rely on the over-protective characteristics seen in Mutaz’s behaviour.

Lowering the rope into Zeina’s room has mythical connotations of Ariadne’s golden thread. It provides the necessary safety line by which she can navigate a personal journey into a new existence. Her courage allows her to entertain the possibility that, despite life’s setbacks, she needs, supported by love, to travel into a far country. Only by doing so will her displaced soul find home.

Hala accompanies her on what is now a pilgrimage towards who they are meant to be. It is interesting what they take with them. For Hala, it is a pair of red shoes that she has never worn, inevitably reminding us of Dorothy’s flight into the wonderful land of Oz. Zeina puts on a dress that her mother was going to give her at Eid ul-Fitr, the festival in which Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadan fasting. We are carried along with them in the hope that nezouh will give way to a rediscovery of soul, water, and people.