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Newsletter May 2019

1. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE award in Gabes, nominated for Critic's Award and showing in Jeonju and Madrid
2. COUNTING TILES in Buenos Aires
3. PANOPTIC in Ankara
4. NATION ESTATE in Costa Rica and in France
5. AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN in Paris
6. THR DREAM (al-Manam) in Paris
7. WAJIB in German cinemas
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1. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE award in Gabes, nominated for Critic's Award and showing in Jeonju and Madrid

Ghassan Halwani's essay documentary was honored with the award for the best documentary film at the Gabes Cinema Fen (Tunisia) and is nominated for the Arab Critics Award by Arab Cinema Centre as one of three feature documentaries. In May the film celebrates it's Asian premiere at the Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea and its Spanish premiere at the Documenta Madrid.

Content
Thirty-five years ago, I witnessed the kidnapping of a man I know.
He has disappeared since.
Ten years ago, I caught a glimpse of his face while walking in the street, but I wasn’t sure it was him.
Parts of his face were torn off, but his features had remained unchanged since the incident. Yet something was different, as if he wasn’t the same man.
essay-documentary, Lebanon 2018, color and black & white, 76 min, Arabic and English with English subtitles
more about the film
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2. COUNTING TILES in Buenos Aires

Cynthia Choucair's feature documentary Cynthia Choucair shows in May at Construire Cinema in Buenos Aires (Argentina).

Content
A group of clowns travel to the Greek island of Lesvos on a mission to bring laughter to the waves of refugees crossing the sea to escape from war and enter Europe. Unwittingly, the clowns find themselves greeted with closed gates witnessing the effects of new policies enacted by the European Union towards the refugees.
Cynthia, the sister of one of the clowns, joins them on their journey which slowly becomes a reflection on the sisters’ own tale of displacement during the Lebanese civil war.
documentary, Cynthia Choucair, Lebanon 2018, 87 min, Arabic with Engl. ST
more about the film
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3. PANOPTIC in Ankara

Rana Eid's as personal as political feature documentary is invited to the Flying Broom Women's Film Festival in Ankara (Turkey) which opens at the end of May.

Content
Panoptic is a letter from a daughter to her deceased father in an attempt to reconcile with her country’s turbulent past.
Panoptic delves into Beirut’s underground to explore Lebanon’s schizophrenia: a nation that thrives for modernity while ironically ignoring the vices that obstruct achieving this modernity.
While the Lebanese population has chosen to turn a blind eye to these vices, Rana Eid, an ordinary citizen, explores the nation’s paradoxes through sound, iconic monuments and secret hidings.
documentary, Rana Eid, Lebanon 2017, 69 min, Arabic with Engl. or French ST
more about the film
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4. NATION ESTATE in Costa Rica and in France

Larissa Sansour's shows in May/June at TEOR/eTica in Costa Rica and at the Festival Ciné-Palestine in Paris (France).

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.
short Sci-fi, Larissa Sansour, Palestine/Denmark 2012, 9 min, digital, no dialogue
more about the film
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5. AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN in Paris

Firas Khoury's short film is part of the short film selection of the Festival Ciné-Palestine in Paris (France) whic is running at the end of May/early June.

Content
Palestinian two years old Razi loves to hear the story of The Monster. The story is an allegory of the Palestinian problem but he is too young to comprehend the political association, he just wants to imagine and live through its details over and over again. The narrator has his own film in his head.
short film, Firas Khoury, Palestine 2017, 9 min, Arabic with English or French ST
more about the film
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6. THE DREAM (al-Manam) in Paris

Mohamad Malas' THE DREAM, a classic of Arab documentary cinema, is showing in the end of May/early June at the Festival Ciné-Palestine in Paris (France).

Content
Shot in 1980-81, the film is composed of interviews with different Palestinian refugees including children, women, old people, and militants from the refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila, Bourj el-Barajneh, Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh in Lebanon. In the interviews Mohamad Malas questions them about their dreams at night. The dreams always converge on Palestine: a woman recounts her dreams about winning the war; a fedai of bombardment and martyrdom; and one man tells of a dream where he meets and is ignored by Gulf emirs. During filming Malas lived in the camps and conducted interviews with more than 400 people. In 1982 the Sabra and Shatila massacres occurred, taking the lives of several people he interviewed, and he stopped working on the project. He returned to it in 1986 and edited the many hours of footage gathered into this 45 minute film, released in 1987.
documentary, Mohamad Malas, Syria 1987, 45 min, Arabic with Engl., German or French ST
more
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7. WAJIB in German cinemas

mec film is happy to anounce the acquisition of the German rights for Annemarie Jacir's multi award winning WAJIB. The film will be released in German cinemas stricktly bi-lingual (German/Arabic) in autumn 2019.

Content
Abu Shadi is a divorced father and a school teacher in his mid-60s living in Nazareth. After his daughter’s wedding in one month he will be living alone. Shadi, his architect son, arrives from Rome after years abroad to help his father in hand delivering the wedding invitations as per local Palestinian custom. As the estranged pair spend the day together, the tense details of their relationship come to a head challenging their fragile and very different lives.
fiction, Annemarie Jacir, Palestine/France/Germany/Colombia/Norway/Qatar/UAE 2017, 96 min, DCP, Arabic with German ST
more in English | more in German/Arabic
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8. DVD of the Months - Solomon's Stone

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 from the novel Blue Light by Hussein Barghouty.

Ramsi Maqdisi, Palestine 2015, shortfilm, fiction, 25 min, Arabic
Subtitles: English
DVD PAL, region free

Subjects
Jerusalem, Myth, Oppression, Archaeology, Palestine

Award
Audience Award for the Best Short Film at the Mizna Arab Film Festival

Insitutional rights
According to the rights you whish to acqiure and your territory the fee varies, please place your order at mec film

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