A fantastic and visually captivating cinematic fable, Sacrifices reflects on how violence and power legitimize themselves, producing rituals and a vocabulary to perpetuate themselves. It portrays the life of a large family held together by the absolute power of its patriarch, the grandfather, who fertilized the land, started the family, built the house and planted a large tree around which their lives revolve. The film opens as the grandfather is dying, and the family surrounds him in anguish and uncertainty. Life begins with death, young men are born as the patriarch expires, and fathers and heroes come back from the war only to dissolve into mud. Selected at Cannes Film Festival's «Un Certain Regard».

Directed by: Oussama Mohammad
Script: Oussama Mohammad
Artistic Consultant: Hala al-Abdallah Yakoub
Camera: Elso Rocca
Editing: Martin Baraquet, Antoinette Azriyeh
Production: AMIP/ The General Organization for Cinema, Damascus, Syria
Cast: Rafiq Sbei’e, Maha al-Saleh, Nihal al-Khatib, Amal ‘Omran, Caresse Bashar, Hala ‘Omran, Bassam Koussa, Fares el-Helou, Zuheir Abdul-Karim, Ali Mohammad
The children: Mirna Ghannam, Mustafa al-Subuh, Mohamad Hamad, Elias Ghannam

Born in Lattakiya in 1954, Oussama Mohammad graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in 1979. There, he directed a short documentary, titled Khutwa Khutwa (Step by Step, 1978). He returned to Syria and directed a short documentary for the General Organization for Cinema titled Al-Yaom Koll Yaom (Today Everyday, 1980). He worked as assistant director to Mohammad Malas on Ahlam al-Madina (Dreams of the City, 1983) and directed his first fiction feature Nujum al-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight) in 1988. Deemed by many to be the most scathing critique of contemporary Syrian society trapped in the iron grip of the Baath regime, the film has never been allowed a public screening in Syria. Although not officially banned, the film has been shelved by diktat, and sits in storage under threat of irremediable physical deterioration. The film was selected at the Cannes Film Festival's Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, and earned the filmmaker great critical praise, including the Golden Olive at the Valencia Festival in the same year.
In 1992, he co-authored the script for al-Leyl (The Night, 1992) with Mohammad Malas and co-directed with Omar Amiralay and Malas the documentaries Shadows and Light (1991) and Fateh Moudaress (1994). He was unable to make his second feature until 2002. Sunduq al-Dunya (Sacrifices, 2002) was meant as an hommage to Andreï Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, the exiled Soviet master's last film, and was selected for the Cannes Film Festival's section Un Certain Regard in 2002. Complex and visually stunning, the film has confirmed its maker as one of the Soviet film school's graduates most individual and masterful filmmakers.