1. DRY HOT SUMMERS in Ann Arbor, Bangalore, Cairo, Hamburg and Freiburg
2. DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG in Peru
3. HAUNTED in Berlin
4. IN THE FUTURE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN in Grimstad and Hamburg
5. Sci-Fi Trilogy by Larissa Sansour
6. FREE RANGE in Freiburg
7. MY NAME IS NOT ALI in Cologne
8. publications + event
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1. DRY HOT SUMMERS in Ann Arbor, Bangalore, Cairo, Hamburg and Freiburg

Sherif Elbendary’s short film DRY HOT SUMMERS opened theatrically in Egypt yesterday. Together with three other Arab short films Cairo’s art house cinema Zawya is presenting the movie on a daily basis. The film has it’s US premiere at the festival of the Arab American Museum in Michigan in the presence of the director. It is also officially selected to Bangalore Short Film Festival in India. B-Movies art house cinema in Hamburg is presenting DRY HOT SUMMERS in their refugees ciné-club and the university of Freiburg, both in Germany, shows the film at their campus cinema.

Content
Two lonely people at opposite chapters of life accidentally meet on a busy summer day in a Cairo taxi. Frail old Shawky and bubbly young Doaa are both caught up in their busy routines as their race through the city evolves into a journey of self-discovery that reconnects them to life.
Egypt/Germany 2015, 30 min, digital, color, Arabic with English or French subtitles
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2. DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG in Peru

Bassem Fayad’s feature documentary DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG is showing at the 6th Lima Independent International Film Festival in Peru this month.

Content
A man and his tiny dog have something in common: obsessive compulsive anxiety disorder. Throughout their quest to heal, we dissect into pieces the surroundings - in its upbringing, fears and constant inner conflict. A memory is recalled; a memory filled with fear, violence, war, love and a past almost depicting itself again in the present and in the future. The setting is a family’s house. A father, a mother, sons, daughters and grandchildren living on a versant in Lebanon. The time is when beauty faded and ugliness and expiation prevailed. The man is the director, the dog is the mirror and the film is the instrument.
Lebanon/UAE, 2014, colour, digital, 75 min, Arabic with English subtitles
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3. HAUNTED in Berlin

Liwaa Yazji’s urgent documentary about the relation of Syrians to their home in the face of the war shows in June at the second edition of the program “Listen” by choreographer Sasha Waltz at Radialsystem Berlin as well as at bi’bak in Berlin-Wedding – in the presence of the director.

Content
“When the bombs fell, the first thing we did was run away. It was not until later that we realized we had not looked back. We were not allowed to say goodbye to our home, our memories, our photos and the life that was lived within them. We have become vacant like these spaces; our hastily packed belongings and the forgotten things haunt us.” An uncertain existence followed the escape and expulsion from Syria that tumbled into a physical and mental nowhere, a non-space between yesterday and tomorrow. “Haunted” tells of the loss of home and security, of the real and metaphorical meaning which a house, a home has in one’s life.
Liwaa Yazji, Syria 2014, 112 min, digital, Arabic with English or French subtitles
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4. IN THE FUTURE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN in Grimstad and Hamburg

The new Sci-Fi by Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind was invited to the official selection of the Norwegian Short Film Festival in Grimstad. It is also showing at the refugee ciné-club at B-Movies in Hamburg in June.

Content
In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain resides in the cross-section between sci-fi, archaeology and politics. Combining live motion and CGI, the film explores the role of myth for history, fact and national identity.
A narrative resistance group makes underground deposits of elaborate porcelain – suggested to belong to an entirely fictional civilization. Their aim is to influence history and support future claims to their vanishing lands.
Palestine/Denmark/UK/Qatar 2015, 29 min, digital, cinescope, Arabic with English subtitles
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5. Sci-Fi Trilogy by Larissa Sansour

mec film is distributing the complete trilogy of Larissa Sansour’s Sci-Fi shorts. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for preview-screeners.

Larissa Sansour – Sci-fi Trilogy
In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2016) completes Larissa Sansour’s science fiction trilogy along with A Space Exodus (2009) and Nation Estate (2012). Under the common themes of loss, belonging, heritage and national identity, the three films each explore different aspects of the political turmoil the Middle East. While A Space Exodus envisions the final uprootedness of the Palestinian experience and takes the current political predicament to its extra-terrestrial extreme by landing the first Palestinian on the moon, Nation Estate reveals a sinister account of an entire population restricted to a single skyscraper, with each Palestinian city confined to a single floor. In the trilogy’s final instalment, In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain, a narrative resistance leader engages in archaeological warfare in a desperate attempt to secure the future of her people. Using the language of sci-fi and glossy production, Sansour’s trilogy presents a dystopian vision of a Middle East on the brink of the apocalypse.
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6. FREE RANGE in Freiburg

Lebanese Spaghetti Western FREE RANGE by Bass Bréche is showing, together with DRY HOT SUMMERS, at Freiburg University student cinema in June.

Content
Based on actual events, Free Range is the story of a cow that crosses the border from Israel to Lebanon and meets with 16 year old Malakeh and her family. A  Lebanese Spaghetti-Western that talks about borders and power between people, religions, cows and UN interventions.
Lebanon/Germany 2014, 16 min, digital, cinescope, Arabic with English subtitles
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7. MY NAME IS NOT ALI in Cologne

Viola Shafik’s cinematic biography of El Hedi Ben Salem M‘barek Mohammed Mustafa, lead actor at Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fear Eats Soul (1973) is showing at the North African Film Weekend at Museum Ludwig in Colonge in June.

Content
His anti-racist film Ali, Fear Eats Soul (1973) gained German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder international acclaim. The protagonist, an Arab foreign worker, was played by Moroccan El Hedi Ben Salem Mbarek Mohammed Mustafa, Fassbinder's lover at that time. While the film itself courageously deals with the racism of post-war German society, its makers reproduced the insensibility and invention of the Other, fantasizing their own 'Salem'. Collage-like, through interviews and archive material, My Name Is Not Ali uncovers the invention of El Hedi Ben Salem by the Fassbinder troupe, an image not revised by most of its members till today.
Viola Shafik, Egypt/Germany 2011, 93 min, German/Arabic/French with English ST
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8. Publications + event

For German leading newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau Irit Neidhardt (mec film) is reviewing TV programs related to the Arab World or the debate on Islam in Europe. The last reviews were about the ARTE productions 100 years of war in the Middle East. The Sykes-Picot Agreement and its fatal consequences and Jihadists in Sight.

For the first evening of its news series of Arab cinema, Filmhouse Nuernberg invited Irit Neidhardt for an introduction into the subject.
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