Amr Assaid has us remembering all the breakups we went through – in a good way, though. The denial, tears, sniffles, sappy love songs by Adele, and the drunk texting that ends up in remorse and explodes into a giant 47575 calorie tub of ice cream. We have to admit, some of the emotions that we exert make us really get in touch with ourselves. Like, 'hey, a little human exists inside of me'. So, we're just grateful for Assaid's two-and-a-half minute film on how to get over an ex-boyfriend that really hits the nail on the head, essentially defined through its title, The Lowdown // How To Get Over Him.We all love getting the lowdown on anything – except from our mothers, whose lowdown is usually the angry goal of 'hagawezzek seed seedo!' – and while it doesn't necessarily mean we can follow through and do exactly what it entails, the short film still serves us a sense of the universality of what we're going through, we're really not alone. It's all about the ups and downs a girl goes through in a breakup. Sounds overdone, right? Not this one. Assaid tells us his inspiration comes from the girlfriends themselves, "There are multiple layers to how I was inspired, I learned a lot from my ex-girlfriends, and from my friends who are girls, and it turned me into a feminist – which is quite uncommon in our society, but I empathise. A lot of my friends come to me with their problems, so you could say I became an informal psychologist. So, a lot of stories come here, and a lot of the time I record them, and those become the fuel for the concept."
In the case of The Lowdown, the up-and-coming filmmaker, after studying at AUC and working in UAE, the Netherlands, and the States in the field of advertising, just decided he'd really like to make films all about human interactions and things they go through and how that fits within the world. "One of my favourite YouTube channels is called The School of Life, and they do a lot of great educational and philosophical videos on matters of life; one of those videos was 'How to get over rejection', but it was very philosophical and formal, and not a lot of people would want to watch that," he shares. "I thought it would be better if it was in slang, and the character of Tom Waits would be a voiceover!"
The film, set in the most colourful apartment ever with gorgeous Dutch amateur actress Myrthe Platenkamp, who is a friend of the filmmaker and was going through a breakup herself, follows how to get over the man 'and hope for the best'. Well, we always do (even though sometimes we believe the best thing is to be with a perfect man to spite the older one, obviously). But, the way to do that, apparently, and so eloquently put in the case of this film, is not to pretend to be brave. As the voiceover narrates in the case of us rejecting others, "It didn't make you a bitch, and it didn't make him holy." It's normal, it happens, and here's how to approach the situation with the least damage possible – that's really what is boils down to.
The brilliant filmmaker lets us in on the project he's working on currently, which is the lowdown on how to compliment a complete stranger. We can't wait to watch that one, because apparently "Hi. I like the pockets on the side of your pants" didn't work out so well last time.
