Content warning: 

This essay discusses rape, sexual assault, and gender violence. Please take time and care while reading and know that there are support services, counselors, and chat lines available to all.

• Trevor Project Lifeline (with texting, online chatting, and phone options) 
• 24-hr Suicide Hotline: 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433) or 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
• Ulifeline, online college mental health resource
• RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
• Center for Pacific Asian Family Los Angeles (Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault) Multilingual: 1-800-339-3940
• House of Ruth, shelter and resources for victims of domestic violence
• 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (formerly National Suicide Prevention Lifeline), call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org for yourself or for a loved one who may need crisis support

Introduction

By: Ellen C. Caldwell

Fatimah Ashgar’s short lyrical film Retrieval (2023) is one of the most powerful films I have seen in recent years. In just under 16 minutes, Ashgar takes viewers on the very personal journey of a soul retrieval, going back in time to save her fragmented self from the trauma and aftermath of sexual assault.

I am writing about Ashgar’s film for various publications and I wanted to share a verbal description of Retrieval here to increase accessibility, both for those who might be visually impaired and for those who might not be able to readily view the film when they are reading or accessing the article. Below, please find my description of Retrieval followed by an embedded video of the film.

Thank you to Fatimah Ashgar for sharing your inspiring and healing work with the world.

Verbal Description of Retrieval

An ethereal woman emerges from the ocean, riding a horse, and wearing an embellished red gown. We hear heavy, distressed breathing. She looks around as if searching for someone or something she’s lost. We see a close-up of the side of the horse’s face and eye—the rider pets the horse to soothe it. She ties her horse to a tree and stands in a wooded area off the coast. The moon shines brightly, the sky is a deep blue, and birds begin to chirp, suggesting that it is nearing dawn. 

A bracelet hanging on a tree branch catches her eye and she collects it, as if finding something she’d previously lost. Then she moves from the coastal woods to an urban street, entering a once-bustling city now frozen in time. She walks into a 24-hour diner that seems familiar to her. People stand frozen in mid-movement serving or clearing tables, and others sit, unmoving in mid-meal and conversation. She studies the scene carefully, as if in search of something that we as the viewers are still uncertain of. 

Not finding what she needs there, she leaves the diner and walks along the sidewalk. She stops at a group of people, and tries shaking one of them as if to rouse them awake, but it proves futile, and everyone remains motionless. Next, she walks towards an apartment building, entering a gate from the sidewalk and cradling her abdomen as if to brace herself physically while walking up the front stoop. She enters the building. Ominous music plays as she arrives in a living room of a dark apartment with the curtains drawn. It is messy with trash littering the space from the past night(s)—empty beer and liquor bottles, a pill container, a partially eaten apple, and take-out fries from that same diner. A television broadcasts black and white static to no one. She sits on the couch and finds a pair of black denim shorts she recognizes, along with a delicate lace dark emerald bra that she picks up and holds close to her heart. 

The television’s static screen hums in the background, when, suddenly, she is jarred by distant male laughter from the other room and looks up quickly. She begins breathing shakily, hyperventilating. Hastily, she grabs a napkin to pick up a dirty sock from the filthy coffee table. She grasps a knife that was lying in wait beneath the sock and stands up quickly with purpose, knowing she must follow the noise.

She assertively moves through the home, seeing her reflection in the mirror at the bottom of the stairs and looking back at herself assuredly before beginning her foreboding ascent upstairs. She steadies herself with her hand on the wall as she climbs. We follow her closer to her destination as physical sounds become more apparent, and we hear the contact of thrusting skin-on-skin and grunting. At the top of the stairs, she passes a bathroom mirror, and again, meets her reflection who looks back at her decisively, as if nodding her on and confirming what she must do.

She proceeds down the hall, enters a dully-lit room, and closes the door behind her. The screen fades to black as the door closes. 

But the darkness is fleeting. Now we are in the dreaded room and we begin seeing disjointed flashes of it. First, the camera pans around, detailing the messy living space: a dying ivy leaf struggles to survive in browning water. Next, there are flashes of close-ups of two people’s skin touching, fragmented bodies in bed. Finally, we are shown a close-up of a tensed man’s hand gripping a sheet on the bed and then we see that there is hair beneath. The lights flicker overhead dramatically.

Now, the camera pans out. A naked white man pins down a woman in bed, though we can barely see her. Still frozen in time, he penetrates her, holding a bed sheet against the side of her head, using it forcefully to both cover her face and hold her down as he rapes her. 

Called to action, the woman in red first grabs his neck as if attempting to strangle him, though this is immediately futile. Next, she tries to move his deadlocked hand. We hear panting and heavy breathing again, mimicking the sound at the start of the film. Does the breathing belong to our protagonist in the red dress or the victim we have just discovered? It is unclear, until we realize they are one in the same, as she removes the sheet from the woman’s face on the bed and we see that it is her past self. She looks off in the distance—still motionless and stuck in time, and yet, a single tear wells in her eye and runs down her cheek.

The woman in red reaches out and holds her own past-self’s hand. As if summoning a higher power, she closes her eyes, concentrates fiercely, and seemingly wills the room to start shaking, opening a crack in the ceiling above them. Past-self begins blinking and tightening her hand around present-self’s hand. A sliver of blue sky appears briefly. Then, all at once, they are together safely, far away from the room, sitting next to each other on the sand, back on the beach. The waves crash loudly. 

Past-self is unclothed, wearing only a pale blue sheet from the bed. She turns and asks future-self, “How long was I there for?”

“Years,” she replies.

“You left me?!” past-self asks incredulously, shocked and hurt.

“No. I just didn’t know how to get you back.”

Future-self puts her arm around past-self and tells her, “She’s calling you.” They look at each other and then to the ocean, knowing what happens next. Past-self stands and walks into the water, the sheet still wrapped around her body. The sun is rising in the distance as she lowers the sheet into the ocean and immerses herself to receive her healing and rebirth.

Credit: VAM Studio (2023) RETRIEVAL by Fatimah Asghar – a short film about healing after assault. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ-hZNe_EaE (accessed 25 November 2024).

Image: Fatimah Ashgar, director; Jess X. Snow, cinematographer; and Jordan Phelps, editor. Retrieval film still, 2023. Courtesy of Fatimah Ashgar.