1. NEW in World Sales: HAUNTED (Maskoon) By Liwaa Yazji
2. NEW in World Sales: DARIES OF A FLYING DOG (Yawmiat Kalb Ta’r) by Bassem Fayad
3. NATION ESTATE in the Videorama at Werkleitz
4. Event
5. DVD of the month: THE NORTH ROAD
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1. NEW in World Sales: HAUNTED (Maskoon) By Liwaa Yazji

mec film is proud to announce that it acquired the international rights of Syrian director Liwaa Yazji’s HAUNTED (Maskoon). The film premiered at FID Marseille last summer where it was honored with a Special Mention of the First Film Prize. This month HAUNTED is shown at DocPoint Helsinki.


Content
In her feature documentary Haunted / Maskoon Syrian director Liwaa Yazji explores what it means to set off in a war. She meets friends and people previously unknown to her at their homes. Domiciles where they live now or where they yet live. Spaces that turned into a sought-after commodity. When does one leave? What does one take? What aspects of life does the departure irretrievably end? How long can one sit tight? How do people call their departure? Are they refugees? Do they move? Do they leave? Do they see themselves as displaced people? Do they just move on? What does home mean? Which rights do they lose? From which loss can they protect themselves? What can they control?
By means of her collected stories Yazji draws quasi en passant the trace of the endless refugee movements in the region of the last 70 years.
Liwaa Yazji, Syria/Germany 2014, 112 min, digital, Arabic with English or French subtitles
The Arabic word maskoon means haunted as well as in habited.
more
Festival programmers can preview the film on Festivalscope.
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2. NEW in World Sales: DARIES OF A FLYING DOG (Yawmiat Kalb Ta’r) by Bassem Fayad

We are as proud as well on the second acquisition which is Bassem Fayad’s feature DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG which had its World Premiere at the Dubai International Film festival in December 2014.

Content
A family of four generations in their house in the Lebanese mountains. A dog.
What does it mean to live in war that constantly changes features and never ends? What does it mean to care for a family in such a situation? Which values do you teach your children? What is society in a civil war? Or the nation? Can one heal before peace?
Using the example of his biography - from the first year of the civil war in 1975 till the early weeks of the Islamic State in summer 2014 - Bassem Fayad lovingly and courageously examines how life moves on while war rotates in and around it.
Lebanon/UAE, 2014, colour, digital, 75 min, Arabic with English subtitles
more
Festival programmers can preview the film on Festivalscope.
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3. NATION ESTATE in the Videorama at Werkleitz

This moths Larissa Sansour’s sci-fi short NATION ESTATE is showing at the Videorama at Werkleitz Society in Halle (Germany). The Videorama is an exhibition space for video art, experimental
 film and media art as well as video installations. On its wide panorama window the Videorama offers media art to passers-by in public space.

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, Arabic with English subtitles
more
more at Werkleitz
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5. Event

For Filmstadt Munich Irit Neidhardt (mec film) together with Ulla Wessler (Filmstadt Munich) programmed a film-series dealing with Gaza which opens on January 23rd, 2015. Since the invention of film the vast majority of movies dealing with the Gaza Strip are made by colonizers and occupiers or by foreigners who, in various ways, show solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. In the last ten years most of the films are made by critical Israelis - who have no physical access to the strip. Very rarely filmmakers from Gaza produce their own images. The program shows films that were produced in the last 30 years. It asks about heteronomy and solidarity and calls for a more critical gaze.
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6. DVD of the month: THE NORTH ROAD

Content
Karim, mid-forties, lives in France since his early teenage years. For the first time in many years he returns to Lebanon to transfer his father remains who died during the war, from Beirut to his home village.

We ultimately chose the winner for its poetic, truthful and unsentimental portrait of an exile’s return home to deal with his father’s death 20 years earlier. The director, Carlos Chahine, portrays the absurdities and contradictions of how we deal with grief through humor, freshness and subtlety.
Jury Statement Tribeca International Film Festival

Carlos Chahine, Lebanon/France, 2008, 25 min, Arabic/French
Subtitles: English
PAL, region free

Subjects
Lebanon, Exile, Post-War, Memory, Grief, Humor

Awards
Best Shortfilm, Tribeca International Film Festival
Golden Muhr Award for the best Arab Short Film, Dubai International Film Festival?
Cinecinécourt Award, Mediterranean Film Festival Montpellier
Special Mention, Award of the Young Audience, Rencontres cinématographiques de Dignes les Bains
Nominated for the Jean Vigo Prize 2009
Best Short Film, Saint Paul Les Trois Chateaux
Best Short Film, International Euro Arab Film Festival AMAL
Best Traditional Short Film, Open Cinema Sankt Petersburg

Home Video Rights: 10,-€
Institutional rights: According to the rights you wish to acquire and your territory the fee varies, please place your order at info@mecfilm.de

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