1. NATION ESTATE wins in Abu Dhabi and shows in Den Haag
2. BIRDS OF SEPTEMBER in Managua and Geneva
3. HAUNTED in Tétouan, Kiev and Fribourg
4. FREE RANGE in Rabat and Geneva
5. THE DINNER in Managua
6. ECCOMI… ECCOTI at the Beirut Coproduction Platform
7. publication: Uproar in Damascus (on Gustav Ucicky‘s feature from 1939)
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1. NATION ESTATE wins in Abu Dhabi and shows in Den Haag

Larissa Sansour’s Sci-fi short won the VISUAL SCIENCE AWARD at the Image Science Festival in Abu Dhabi last month and shows in March at the Arab Women’s Film Festival in The Hague (Netherlands).

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.
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2. BIRDS OF SEPTEMBER in Managua and Geneva

Sarah Francis special portrait of Beirut is presented this month at the Ibero-Arab Women’s Film Festival in Managua/Nicaragua and at the Festival of Oriental Film in Geneva / Switzerland.

Content
A glassed van roams the streets of Beirut, home to a camera that explores the city behind the glass. Along the way, several people are invited to share a personal moment in this moving confessional. Each one comes as a face, a body, a posture, a voice, an attitude, an emotion, a point of view, a memory. Their confessions are true, blunt, and intimate. However, soon enough, the van empties again, and roams Beirut; restlessly looking for something, for someone.
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3. HAUNTED in Tétouan, Kiev and Fribourg

Liwaa Yazji’s HAUNTED (Maskoon) continues touring at festivals. In March the documentary reflection about  leaving home at war can be seen at the Mediterranean Film Festival in Tétouan / Morocco, at the Human Rights Film Festival in Kiev / Ukraine as well at the Syrian focus of Fribourg Film festival in Switzerland.

Content
In her feature documentary 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 irretrievably end with the departure? 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.
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4. FREE RANGE in Rabat and Geneva

Bass Bréch‘s Lebanese Spaghetti-Western FREE RANGE will show in March at Handifilm Festival in Rabat / Morocco as well as at the Festival of Oriental Film in Geneva.

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.
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5. THE DINNER in Managua

Mais Darwazeh‘s  short film THE DINNER, part of the compilation FAMILY ALBUMS will be shown at Ibero-Arab Women’s Film Festival in Managua / Nicaragua. The program was presented in December in Cairo, the next screening of the program will be in Mexico.

Content
Mais Darwazeh lives alone. In Amman, a city of uprooted people, she creates her own identity by gathering around her table close friends, chosen ingredients, and old recipes.
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6. ECCOMI… ECCOTI at Beirut Coproduction Platform

Raed Rafeis essayistischer Dokumentarfilm Eccomi…Eccoti (I am here.. You are there), eine Koproduktion mit mec film, befindet sich in der Postproduktion und wird kommende Woche als Work in Progress bei der ersten Beirut Coproduction Platform präsentiert.

Inhalt
Two men. Two worlds. And a quest for a common future in a world beset with real and imaginary boundaries. Eccomi... Eccoti unfolds as a travel-log navigating between a European reality, a barricaded promised land for homosexuals, and an Arab context where several gay characters are in limbo between seeking acceptance and a desire for exile.
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7. publication: Uproar in Damascus (on Gustav Ucicky‘s feature from 1939)

In summer 2014 the cinémathèque of the German Historical Museum in Berlin presented a film series of films dealing with World War I. One of them was Gustav Ucicky’s mobilization film for WWII “Uproar in Damascus” which Irit Neidhardt (mec film) had introduced. The text can now be downloaded (in German) at the museum’s website
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