1. HAUNTED – German theatrical release, international festivals and award
2. DRY HOT SUMMERS wins in Brussels and in Malmoe, further festivals
3. The Sci-Fi Trilogy of Larissa Sansour
4. IN THE FUTURE THY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN travelling
5. AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE in San Francisco
6. SOLOMON’S STONE in Montpellier and Washington
7. event
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1. HAUNTED – German theatrical release, international festivals and award

Liwaa Yazji’s feature length documentary HAUNTED (Maskoon) will be released in German cinemas on November, 24th 2016. Furthermore the film continues to travel the world, in October it shows in Basel, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Gabes and Vienna.

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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2. DRY HOT SUMMERS wins in Brussels and in Malmoe, further festivals

Sherif Elbendary’s DRY HOT SUMMERS won the Audience Award at the Aflam du Sud Festivals in Brussels in September and the award for the Best Short Film at the Arab Film Festival in Malmoe earlier this month.

In October the film shows at the Arab Film Festival Tuebingen/Germany, the Nour Festival in London, the renown Film Days Carthage in Tunis, the Arab Film Festivals in Malmoe/Sweden and San Francisco, at the opening of the new building of the Goethe Institute in Cairo as well as the Mediterranean Film Festival Montpellier/France.

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. The Sci-Fi Trilogy of Larissa Sansour

Larissa Sansour’s Sci-fi short film trilogy shows in October at the DC Palestine Film & Art Festival in Washington.

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. IN THE FUTURE THY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN travelling

Larissa Sansour’s new Sci-fi IN THE FUTUTRE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN (co-director: Soren Lind) shows in October at the London International Film Festival, the Arab Film Festival San Francisco, the Imagine Science Festival in New York, the Days of Cinema Ramallah, at the ARTifari Festival in the Sahauri refugee camps in Algeria as well as at the University of Vienna.

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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5. AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE in San Francisco

Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE shows at the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco.

In recent years, living in Egypt, there have been many moments in which mundane normalcy is juxtaposed with the spectacularly dramatic, in which everyday life continues amid the grand narratives of revolution, coup and “war on terror.” Spaces where nothing happens and yet everything happens at the same time.

This is one reason why Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s 24-minute film, Waala Saeeden Akhar (And on a Different Note, 2015), is so powerful. Quiet, largely static images from everyday life are paired with audio clips from Egyptian news, prime-time political talk shows and films, alongside sometimes seemingly unrelated diary-like subtitles. (Mada Masr Independent)

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. SOLOMON’S STONE in Montpellier and Washington

Ramzi Maqdisi‘s short film SOLOMON’S STONE shows this month at the DC Palestine Film & Art Festival in Washington as well as in the short film competition at the Mediterranean Film Festival in Montpellier/France.

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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7. event

After showing the program „Glow of Memory. Retrospective of German-PLO Koproductions” last year the cinemathéque of the German Historical Museum in Berlin, a smaller version of the program, curated by Irit Neidhardt (mec film), is travelling to Ramallah in October. Three West-German film-makers who (co)produced with the PLO will present and discuss their works in the framework of the Days of Cinema, in cooperation with the Palestine Broadcast Corporation and the Goethe Institute.
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