Participants & Projects 2012
FROM ALGERIA
Drifa and the Lonely Whales
by Drifa Mezenner
Zeina, a young Algerian woman, goes to the encounter of five women, to listen to their stories in Algeria today. Zeina is questioning the confusion within a generation of women who witnessed a blank of ten years of their lives, due to the dark decade the country went through in the 90, the film shed the light on the conflict between the need to fulfill their dreams, to be themselves even being lonely, and the society transformation, attitudes and beliefs inherited from an alienating past, imposing a stereotype of how a woman should live.
FROM EGYPT
A Grey Sky
by Mostafa Youssef, Seen Film
A Grey Sky is a feature-length documentary to be shot digitally during the Spring of 2013. The film follows the journey of a medical student as he struggles through his intern year at the governmental hospital with the decision of continuing medicine studies. Through his journey we are faced with the increasing indifference of Egyptian society towards the notion of death; why has death become so frail and the value of life insignificant in the face of poverty, ignorance and corruption?
Mother of The Unborn
by Nadine Salib Michael Abdel Saed & Ahmed Fawzi Saleh, Albatrik
Sadeya and Hanan are two infertile women living in remote lands located in the upper Egyptian region. After discovering their inability to conceive, they are forced to be impregnated or else they loose their womanhood, their place in their society and moreover their marital lives. Although they both share the same inability, they have different struggles and yet, despite their different religions, they found themselves walking the same path. Desperately they both head to Um Mansour, the old midwife who is a doctor and a pious woman. Um Mansour helps them according to the old traditional ways of impregnation, which is somehow mystical but thought of as religious. But will they save their face and conceive the awaited child, will their attempts save them from being stigmatized, and is breeding the only dream they want to pursue?
Our Paused Dreams
by Ahmed Nour
For ”Stability” many Egyptians had to pause their revolution’s dream and elected the radical Islamic regime! The stability virus threatens my life as well since my mother has started to ask me to quit filmmaking for a fixed job because soon my dad won’t be able to help me financially after his retirement, so I try to enter the world of my dad who had to waive his dream and quit writing for a fixed job after my birth, I try to wake up his dream inside of him and get him out of his depression by taking him and mum for a visit to “Almansoura” the city where they firstly met during the war “1967-1973”. This visit and the coming political incidents during the rule of ”Muslim brothers” will definitely affect me and my dad in making the decision of whether to pause or follow our dreams.
The City Will Pursue You
by Ahmed Nabil
Ossama is fond of reciting the stories of old buildings being continuously demolished in the city. Islam’s story is about his experience with the “Don Bosco” Italian catholic school, where he experienced some alternative teachings during his childhood. Alaa has lived all his life in his big family house, the house that he had to evacuate later for the inheritance to be distributed. Hend, the Nubian writer, has a story related to her late grandmother, Halima, who was brought to Alexandria to serve in the royal palace of Al-Montazah. She resided in a cottage of those that were built specially for the servants just beside the palace. These cottages still exist but are to be demolished sooner or later. On the other hand, Abdel Azeez, apart from being an English teacher, he has always been active politically and as a historian as well. The film deals with his passion of collecting old personal documents of Alexandrians.
The Old Days Will Come Again
by Dina Hamza, Misr International Film
Dina, a young director, is overcome by loneliness after the death of her father, Mohamed Hamza, a renowned poet, who wrote songs for the biggest Arab stars, most notably the epic Abdel Halim Hafez. In his desk, Dina finds clippings about girls who committed suicide on the day of Halim’s death in 1977- a story her father never fully told. Intrigued, she embarks on a documentary about these girls in order to decipher their motivations. But gradually, as she meets witnesses to her father‘s life and his strong relationship to Abdel Halim Hafez, Dina focuses away from the suicide theme. She instead begins an exploratory search into her father’s past. As she reconstitutes his life, we get a glimpse of Egypt‘s history from the 1950s till the late 1970s and understand that Hamza’s lyrics and Halim’s voice served as the mouthpiece of this era of romantic dreams and the ideals of the 1952 Revolution. Halim’s death in 1977 signals the close of an important stage in both her father’s life and that of Egypt. Dina becomes aware that immersion in memories heightens her sense of loneliness once again. The January 25, 2011, Revolution breaks out, driving Dina to Tahrir Square. She finds Hamza’s lyrics and Halim’s voice reverberating in the Square- this time sung out loud by the crowds of her generation. She suddenly feels her father’s presence and understands the legacy he has left her. The voyage she has taken through Hamza‘s life and the Egyptian recent history suddenly finds its real meaning in the hopes of the crowd that surrounds her: a dream for Egypt‘s future revived.
FROM JORDAN
Sisters Of Manhood
by Said Najmi
The story of a group of women exploring their transformation after taking on a challenging job “removing landmines” in a small conservative community.
FROM LEBANON
FAP FAP
by Jowe Harfouche, Ginger Beirut Productions
A feasibility study on the making of an erotic film in 2013 Lebanon, FAP FAP is a documentary following the production process of the fictional script Sitt Batoul. From the audition tapes and production meetings to rehearsals and negotiations with the censors, FAP FAP follows a creative team trying to make Sitt Batoul happen against all odds. Spearheaded by a determined director, the fearless production company Ginger Beirut navigates the complex web of political, religious, and legal issues that arise in the ambitious quest to produce their first erotic film.
Scars and Traces
by Remi Itani & Dima Al-Joundi, Crystal Film
The film follows the life of a young man, trying to carve a meaning out of his life in a despondent surrounding. Ibrahim, 24 years old, has been to jail for more than 20 times. He comes from Bab EL-Tebbaneh, the poorest neighborhood in North Lebanon known for its sectarian violence and religious fanatics. None the less, drug dealers and erotic theaters are widely spread at the peripheries of the area. The polarity of the situation reflects Ibrahim‘s inner turmoil and inconsistency in deciding his life path.
FROM LIBYA
Cairo- Ar-Rehebat
by Abdullah Al-Ghaly & Hala Lotfy, Hassala Productions
This documentary is a developing story from the point of view of the filmmaker who is half Egyptian half Libyan and just happened to be between two revolutions yet having this void of not fully belonging to any of them. It‘s a journey the director is leading through out history and geography. He will be guided by old and young revolts and will end up discovering another journey... an inside journey in which he should get in touch with his father‘s past and his family‘s heritage.
FROM MOROCCO
Is There A Man Knocking On The Door?
by Loubna Fahmi
Girls in the Arab world are raised to wait for the man who will knock at the door to ask for their hand in marriage. The prince of the heart, the unknown but undoubtedly rich, young and gentle man: every girl’s dream, even in Morocco! My grandmother and mother didn’t choose their husbands; their future husbands came with their relatives knocking at their future wives parent’s front door to ask for their hand in marriage. “34 is starting to be late for a woman…”, that’s what I hear from my family and lots of other people. Today, my grandmother, who’s very outspoken and forthright, decided to take things in hand. She wants me to find a husband; she thinks that I’ve really got a problem and therefore wants to resolve it…anyway! I decided to accept and follow my grandmother’s proposition to resolve “my problem” and film the whole process questioning the Moroccan society mindset.
FROM PALESTINE
3 In Cacophony Case
by Nihad Marqasto & Christine Rinawi
The film is a journey of a group of Africans who live in the Old City of Jerusalem. Three of the Africans make up a musical and theatrical band, to express the difficult social and political conditions that are suffered by the Palestinians in general and Africans in particular in Jerusalem. The expression style is through theatrical and improvisational monologues and production and music through playing on remnants of cars, empty cans and barrels, water tanks like street music.
A Possible Memory
by Mohanad Yaqubi & Rami Nihawi, Idioms Film
Salma has recently moved to her new flat in a recently gentrified area of Beirut, while having coffee in one of her lonely mornings, she gets a letter. The letter is 30 years late, signed by a Palestinian revolutionary organization, addressed to a printshop, the letter ends with the slogan „Revolution until victory“. This letter pushes Salma to wonder about the sender, discovering memories and stories of different places in Beirut, memory of people who were once here, a history of a city in a period that holds many stories and dreams of change.Through funny and irrational discussions between the filmmakers, the film discuss the ability to connect several stories about what could be the possible memory of a certain place or event, in an attempt to reconnect history with space, stories that are not connected except of the filmmakers well to make one continuous and coherent story.
FROM TUNISIA
The Elephant In The Room
by Walid Tayaa & Dora Bouchoucha, Nomadis Images
My guilt and my silence during the years of dictatorship on torture. Through the stories of people who tell their moments of despair and loneliness under torture. Personal history, poetic tale of a silent grief.
