1. IN THE FUTURE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN wins in Guanajuato and shows in Berlin and Minneapolis-Saint Paul
2. DRY HOT SUMMERS wins in Cairo and in Oman and shows at festivals
3. Sci-Fi Trilogy by Larissa Sansour
4. HAUNTED in Toronto and coming to German theatres soon
5. AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE in Minneapolis-Saint Paul
6. NATION ESTATE in Beirut
7. SOLOMON’S STONE in Buenos Aires and London
8. events and publications
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1. IN THE FUTURE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN wins in Guanajuato and shows in Berlin and Minneapolis-Saint Paul

Larissa Sansour’s new Sci-fi IN THE FUTUTRE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN (co-director: Soren Lind) won the award for the Best Experimental Short Film at renown Expression en Corto Festival in Guanajuato in Mexico.
From Sept, 9th to Oct, 9th 2016 the work shows on a daily basis in the exhibition „Questioning the Chroma-Key Principle“ in Ballhaus Naunynstrasse in Berlin. In the USA you can watch IN THE FUTURE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN at the Mizna Twin City Arab Film Festival in Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

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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2. DRY HOT SUMMERS wins in Cairo and in Oman and shows at festivals

Sherif Elbendary’s DRY HOT SUMMERS won the award fort eh Best Actress at the Nile Bride’s Forum in Cairo as well as the award for the Best Arab Short Film at the Third Forum for Arab Film in Dhofar in Oman.

This months film shows at Hamburg International Film Festival, Films du Sud in Brussels and at the Arab Film Festivals in Buenos Aires and Malmö.

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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3. Sci-Fi Trilogy by Larissa Sansour

Larissa Sansour’s Sci-fi short film trilogy shows in September at the Toronto Palestine Film Festival in Canada.

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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4. HAUNTED in Toronto and coming to German theatres soon

Liwaa Yazji’s feature documentary shows in September at Toronto International Film festival’s year round program in a special series „Syria Self-Portraits: Chronicles of Tyranny, Chronicles of War“. The film will be available with German subtitles for cinemas and refugee initiatives soon, both in its feature length version as well as in the 63 minute edit for educational screening.

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, French, Spanish, Turkish or German subtitles
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5. AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE in Minneapolis-Saint Paul

Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s experimental short film AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE, a new entry to the mec film World Sales catalogue, is showing at the Mizna Arab Film Festival in Minneapolis-Saint Paul this month.

Content
Today in this house nothing happens, nor does it in the homes of others. Time and place stand on parallel lines, refuting the coordinates of existence. The chronology of events is obscured, subversive noise is obliterated, elucidation impossible and language futile. All that remains is a soundscape perpetually occupied by self-proclaimed patriots, and scattered spaces carved by the rhythm of everyday life, all conspiring to maintain the status quo while hiding the humming background noise of the world.
And on a Different Note is a navigation of an attempt to carve out a personal space amid an inescapable sonic shield created primarily by prime time political talk shows with their indistinguishable, absurd and at times undecipherable rhetoric/ noises. Equally repulsive and addictive, these noises travel across geographies gradually constituting an integral part of a self-created map of exile.
Egypt 2015, 24 min, color, Arabic/ English with English/Arabic Subtitles
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6. NATION ESTATE in Beirut

Larissa Sansour’s short Sci-fi NATION ESTATE from 2012 is restlessly travelling the world. In September it shows at the Maskoon Sci-fi Festival in Beirut.

Content
Nation Estate is a 9-minute sci-fi short offering a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the Middle East.
The film explores a vertical solution to Palestinian statehood: One colossal skyscraper housing the entire Palestinian population - now finally living the high life.
Larissa Sansour, Palestine/Denmark 2012, 9 min, digital, no dialogue
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7. SOLOMON’S STONE in Buenos Aires and London

Ramzi Maqdisi‘s short film SOLOMON’S STONE shows this month at the Arab Film Festival in Buenos Aires as well as at P21 Gallery in London.

Content
Hussein, a Palestinian young man, receives a letter from the Israeli post office to appear in person to receive a package. He has to pay the sum of 20.000 $ US dollars in order to collect that package. Hussein’s curiosity to find out what the package contains drives him to sell everything he owns, despite the outright rejection of his mother, the matter that changes their lives afterwards.
The story is adapted by the novel Blue Light by Hussein Barghouty.
Palestine/Spain 2015, 25 min, color, Arabic with English or French subtitles
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8. events and publications

Irit Neidhardt (mec film) is invited as speaker to the conference Film, Flight and Interculturality which takes place in the framework at the Lucas Film Festival at German Film Institute in Frankfurt. At the Film House in Nuernberg she will tutorise a teachers‘ on the job training on media images on the Syrian war.

publications: TV reviews about Hadja Lahbib’s Patience, Patience – You’ll Go to Paradise! and "The Secret Story of ISIS“ reviewed with „Baghdad – Devided City“. (German)
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