1. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW worldwide online from Cairo
2. CHRONIC and ECCOMI ... ECCOTI online at Shasha Movies
3. THE DREAM in Canada
5. Just released in German theatres: 1982 NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO
6. PANOPTIC in France and Switzerland
7. IN VITRO in Germany and Spain
8. CHRONIC online world wide
10. DVD of the month - BIRDS OF SEPTEMBER
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1. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW worldwide online from Cairo

Sarah Francis is showing world wide at the Between Women Filmmakers Caravan in Egypt, Q&A with Sarah Francis on November 9th.

Content
A group of people roams in a bare landscape around a set of swings as their only settlement, as if mapping, exploring, reorganizing the open territory they are in. As they move, changes in soundscapes make them virtually cross geographies. In the sky, a moon-like satellite roves above their heads, following them like an omen. The moon, once symbolizing cyclical times, myths and new beginnings, is now the satellite waiting to be conquered and colonized. Reality and fantasy intertwine in an existential quest. Is a new beginning really possible? As below, so above.
documentary, Sarah Francis, Lebanon 2020, 70 min, b&w and color, Arabic with English subtitles
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2. CHRONIC and ECCOMI ... ECCOTI online at Shasha Movies

CHRONIC by Mohamad Sabbah and ECCOMI ... ECCOTI by Read Rafei show in October/November in the Queer Arab Cinemas program of Shasha Movies

CHRONIC
Beirut is a city where any person can experience loss at any moment . Walid lost his hope for love. May couldn't say goodbye to her lover. He died in the sea. Antoine was about to lose his own life.
Omar a photographer lost his male lover in an explosion. He casts the three and invites them to his studio, and together they express stories of sex, love and trauma in the city of Beirut. Visitor after visitor, chapter after chapter, Omar loses control and provokes danger.
feature fiction, Mohamed Sabbah, Lebanon/Germany 2017, 89min, Arabic with Engl. ST
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ECCOMI ...ECCOTI
Two men, two contrasting realities, and a quest for a shared future despite a world of physical and imaginary boundaries.
Eccomi ... Eccoti is a road-trip documentary that explores the depths of a transnational gay relationship in today’s world. Set between Lebanon and Italy, this essay film is a poetic collage of fragments from a personal archive of shared moments: still travel photos, ambient sounds and videos of everyday instances. Through conversations between the filmmaker and his partner, this film raises questions of love, commitment, familial trauma, European border restrictions, LGBT rights and ongoing persecutions all within the contours of a shimmering queer utopia.
documentary, Raed Rafei, Lebanon 2017, 68 min, color, Arabic/French/Italian/English with Engl. ST
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3. THE DREAM in Canada

Mohamad Malas classic of Arab documentary cinema is showing in November at the Cinémathèque québécoise in Canada in the 14th edition of Regards Palestiniens.

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
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5. Just released in German theatres: 1982 NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO

Highly acclaimed by the German press and with recommendation for schools, Oualid Mouaness' multi award winning feature opened in German cinemas on November, 4th.

Content
In June of 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, a country just north of its border was already reeling from its ongoing fractious war.  In this feature debut, director Oualid Mouaness revisits this cataclysmic moment in Lebanese history through a different lens: a kid's point-of-view at a quaker school on the outskirts of Beirut.  As the geopolitical conflict inches closer and closer, 11-year-old Wissam (Mohamad Dalli) is more intent on finding the courage to tell his classmate that he loves her.  For a dreamer like Wissam, who is more likely to be drawing than playing football, it's hard to comprehend the gravity of the impending violence.  But for his teachers, Yesmine (Nadine Labaki) and Joseph (Rodrigue Sleiman), the jets in the sky signal something far more dangerous.  As they try to mask their growing fears for the sake of the students, they also attempt to hide the fractures in their relationship. They fall on different sides of the political divide and look a way to reconcile a relationship that seems irreconcilable due the nature of the war besieging the country they love.
Fiction, Oualid Mouaness, Libanon/USA/Qatar/Norwey 2019, 100 min, Arabic with German subtitles
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6. PANOPTIC in France and Switzerland

Rana Eid's essayist documentary is presented in November by the documentary film festival in La Rochelle (France) and the World Film Days in Thusis (Switzerland).

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.
In a rare case where the sound landscape of a film dictates the visual landscape, Panoptic is a depiction of the turbulent Lebanese past and the way society copes with trauma.
documentary, Rana Eid, Lebanon 2017, 69 min, Arabic with Engl. or French ST
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7. IN VITRO in Germany and Spain

Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind's dystopic short's November invitations are to the Short Film festival in Cologne (Germany) and the Feminist Film Manifestos VII in Barcelona (Catalonia/Spain).

Content
In Vitro is set in the aftermath of an eco-disaster. An abandoned nuclear reactor under the biblical town of Bethlehem has been converted into an enormous orchard. Using heirloom seeds collected in the final days before the apocalypse, a group of scientists are preparing to replant the soil above.
In the hospital wing of the underground compound, the orchard’s ailing founder, 70-year-old Dunia is lying in her deathbed, as 30-year-old Alia comes to visit her. Alia is born underground as part of a comprehensive cloning program and has never seen the town she’s destined to rebuild.
short Sci-fi, Larissa Sansour & Soren Lind, Palestine/Denmark/UK 2019, 28 min, digital, picture ratio 1:2.66, Arabic with English subtitles
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8. CHRONIC online world wide

Mohamad Sabbah's feature is presented world wide online by Cinema For All in Lebanon between November 11th and 15th. A Q&A with he director will be online as well.

Content
Beirut is a city where any person can experience loss at any moment . Walid lost his hope for love. May couldn't say goodbye to her lover. He died in the sea. Antoine was about to lose his own life.
Omar a photographer lost his male lover in an explosion. He casts the three and invites them to his studio, and together they express stories of sex, love and trauma in the city of Beirut. Visitor after visitor, chapter after chapter, Omar loses control and provokes danger.
feature fiction, Mohamed Sabbah, Lebanon/Germany 2017, 89min, Arabic with Engl. ST
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9. YELO GUIDE new edition online

The 4th edition of the YELO GUIDE Funding Guide for Arab Filmmakers and Producers, compiled by Irit Neidhardt (mec fim) is now online in a new online format at daleel.film
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10. DVD of the month - BIRDS OF SEPTEMBER

Birds of September remains one of the outstanding Arab documentaries so far this century (Middle East Eye)

Although Beirut looms over these people’s shoulders at all times, Birds of September represents an unexpected technical variation on the “city symphony.” ...By opting for slow, steady pans, Francis emphasizes her interviewees’ nostalgia, not the dynamism of the city they live in. (Film Comment)

Each element is only partially graspable – it’s possible to focus on the words, the face or the city behind them, but usually never all at once. At times it feels like tapping into Beirut’s unconscious, the streets and sky merging with anxieties about work, relationships and religion. (Movie Morlocks)

Francis’s anecdotal narrative allows for a formulation of social intrigue unique to this promising first film. (The L Magazine)

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.

DVD-Info
Sarah Francis, Lebanon/Qatar 2013, 99 min, Arabic
Subtitles: English
Synopsis, credits, director’s biography
PAL, no regional code

Subjects
City, Beirut, Loneliness, Architecture, Portrait, Urbanism, Soundscape, social, anthropological, Essay, Lebanon, City Symphony

Awards
Best First Feature - International Mediterranean Film Festival Tétouan
White Goose Award - Best Film at DMZ Documentary Film Festival South Korea
Special Mention Pravo Ljudski Film Festival extra muros Competition Program Award
Best Documentary Award - Silk Road Festival Dublin
'Mention Francois Barat' from 'Les rencontres cinematographiques de Cerbere/Portbou

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