Islamic exorcism or psychotropic medication?
Descending with Angels explores two highly different solutions to the same problem: namely Danish Muslims who are possessed by invisible spirits, called jinn.
A Palestinian refugee living in the city of Aarhus has been committed to psychiatric treatment after a severe case of jinn possession which caused him to destroy the interior of a mosque, crash several cars, and insult a number of people. He sees no point in psychotropic medication since his illness has already been treated with Quranic incantations. A psychiatrist and nurse try to understand his point of view but find that even further medication is needed. In the meantime a local imam battles a stubborn jinn-spirit of Iraqi origin and tries to explain the Muslims of Aarhus that they should stop worrying so much about jinn, magic, and other mundane affairs since nothing can harm anyone except by the permission of God.
The film compares two systems of treatment that despite vast differences both share a view of healing as operating through submission of faith to an external non-human agency — namely God or biomedicine.
"It seems to rain a great deal in Denmark. With the
rain, angels descend to feed plants, bless homes, wash the city, and generally
watch over its residents. Christian Suhr's ethnographic film, Descending
with angels, considers what comes down with the rain, as Suhr maneuvers between
and through Islamic healing practices and the Danish psychiatric system.
The film accomplishes something unique in participatory
sequences in which Suhr and the doctors, shaykhs, Muslim patients, and Muslim
youth attempt to make sense of what they are seeing, from footage Suhr has shot
to online Islamic exorcism videos.
Descending with angels provides a complex picture of
Muslim life in Denmark, from the diversity of Muslim immigrant communities to
the transcultural spaces between medicine, religion, social services, and
community. It dives into and evokes the liminal and transgressive, avoiding
totalizing narratives and burdens of information while also getting at what it
means to believe, whether in magic or Western medicine.
The film offers a productive point for pedagogical departure
for classes concerned with Islam and Islamic healing, immigration,
consciousness and mental illness, religion and science, public health,
ethnographic ethics and reflexivity, and visual anthropology."
Maryam Kashani, University of Illinois, American
Anthropologist, June 2018
SELECTED SCREENINGS
SVA Film and Media Festival, AAA, Washington DC 2014
Special Student Film Award, Göttingen International
Ethnographic Film Festival, 2014
American Academy of Religion, Special panel about
the film, San Diego 2014
Athens Ethnographic Film Festival 2014
Munich International Ethnographic Film Festival
2014
Sardinia International Ethnographic Film
Festival, Nuoro, Italy 2014
Göttingen International Ethnographic Film
Festival 2014
Beeld voor Beeld, Amsterdam 2013
CPH:DOX, Copenhagen 2013
NAFA Film Festival, Bilbao 2013
RAI International Ethnographic Film Festival, Edinburgh
2013