Nayla Al Khaja’s sophomore feature Baab is a richly textured psychological fantasy – assured in its craft, striking in its atmosphere and anchored by a pair of formidable central performances. While its final movements stop short of offering full narrative resolution, the film’s emotional and aesthetic ambition marks a significant step forward for one of the UAE’s most distinctive cinematic voices.
The film opens by plunging the viewer directly into its protagonist’s sensory world. Wahida (Shaimaa El Fadul), a mother of two, is struggling to process the death of her twin sister Nasma. She also suffers from tinnitus, a condition Al Khaja renders viscerally through piercing, high-frequency sound design that establishes unease from the get-go. The effect is disorienting and relentless – and immediately effective.
Wahida lives with her teenage daughter Amal (Meera Almidfa), her young son Tariq (Mansoor Alnoamani), and her domineering mother Fatma (Huda Alghanem). Fatma has kept Nasma’s bedroom sealed since her death a year earlier – a shrine marked by a peculiarly green door – refusing to discuss what happened. When Wahida finally breaks inside, she discovers cassette tapes that begin to transport her into fragmented visions of the past, spanning decades and emotional registers.
Though Baab recalls works such as What Remains of Edith Finch and The Orphanage in its thematic interest in grief, memory and inherited trauma, Al Khaja’s approach is notably different. Rather than unravel a mystery in linear fashion, she foregrounds the mind’s desperate need to fill gaps left by loss. Time fractures. Perspective shifts. The house itself becomes unstable – possibly haunted, possibly not – as Wahida’s psychological descent deepens.
The film’s first act unfolds with a deliberate stillness, carefully sketching the domestic dynamics at play. Amal is caught between emerging independence and emotional parentification; Tariq fixates on the trivial urgency of acquiring a smartphone; Fatma embodies a generation steeped in rigid social expectations and unprocessed grief. These rhythms are patient but purposeful, allowing tension to accumulate beneath the surface.
When the second act arrives, Baab takes a far more audacious turn. The cassette tapes trigger surreal temporal dislocations, shifting the film into something closer to a psychological thriller. The transitions are disquieting rather than flashy, aided by Rogier Stoffers’s shadow-heavy cinematography, which renders night oppressively dense and daylight fleetingly merciful. The contrast is so pronounced that each morning feels like a small act of survival.
Sound remains the film’s most powerful tool. Krishnan Subramanian’s design is meticulous and unnerving, while Oscar-winner AR Rahman’s melancholic score – blending South Asian and Middle Eastern influences – provides emotional ballast rather than narrative guidance. Together, they reinforce the sense that we are navigating Wahida’s internal landscape, not an external logic.
Perhaps the film’s greatest achievement is its treatment of Fatma. Initially positioned as an antagonist, she gradually emerges as a woman hollowed out by grief, clinging to control as a substitute for understanding. Alghanem’s performance is quietly devastating, transforming Fatma into the film’s most unexpectedly empathetic figure.
It is in Baab’s final stretch that the film risks alienating some viewers. The conclusion leaves key questions unresolved, denying the catharsis or explanatory closure often expected of genre storytelling. Within the film’s psychological framework, this restraint makes sense – grief does not conclude neatly, nor does trauma obey narrative logic.
Still, the absence of a clearer “why” may frustrate those fully invested in the mystery itself.
That frustration, however, never outweighs the film’s achievements. Baab is gorgeously shot, meticulously designed and powered by exceptional performances – particularly from El Fadul and Alghanem, with Sabiha Majgaonkar offering a restrained and effective supporting turn. Al Khaja’s vision remains confident and controlled, focused less on answers than on emotional truth.
The result is a nuanced, multidimensional character study that confirms Baab as a bold and significant work – one that lingers, even when it withholds.
Baab is in cinemas now across the UAE
