Newsletter September 2019
1. WAJIB by Annemarie Jacir opening in German cinemas
2. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE in Canada and the USA
3. THE NIGHT (al-Leil) in Kurdistan
4. PANOPTIC in Kurdistan
5. AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN in Palestine
6. events
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1. WAJIB by Annemarie Jacir opening in German cinemas
Annmarie Jacir's multi-award winning will be theatrically released by mec film in Germany on September 19th, 2019.
A whip-smart, moving comedy of family and community. (CineVue)
Big ideas and the everyday frictions of family elide in this sensitive, impressive Palestinian drama. (Time Out)
04.-12.09.2019 Fünf Seen Film Festival
from 19.9.2019 Berlin (Brotfabrik)
from 19.9.2019 Berlin (fsk)
from 19.9.2019 Berlin (Wolf Kino)
from 19.9.2019 Hamburg (3001 Kino)
from 19.9.2019 Heidelberg (Karlstorkino)
from 19.9.2019 Munich (Werkstattkino)
19.-23.09.2019 Hannover (Kino im Künstlerhaus)
from 20.9.2019 Bonn (Kinemathek)
26.09.2019 Weimar (Kino im mon ami)
26.9.-2.10.2019 Esslingen (Kommunales Kino)
26.9.-2.10.2019 Bochum (Endstation Kino)
10.-23.10.2019 Nürnberg (Filmhaus)
all updated screening dates here
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
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2. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE in Canada and the USA
In September Ghassan Halwani's film is invited to the Toronto Palestine Film Festival in Canada and to the Mizna Arab Film Festival in the Twin Cities (USA).
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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3. THE NIGHT (al-Leil) in Kurdistan
Mohamad Malas' classic is invited to the Duhok International Film festival (Kurdistan) in September.
Content
In the destroyed city of Quneitra is the grave of a resistance fighter for Palestine. His son, the director, tries to restore the dead man’s history by mixing echoes of his mother’s memory and his desire to give his father a more honorable death. Through the daily lives, dreams, fears and hopes of its citizens, Malas chronicles his hometown Quneitra in the Golan Heights between 1936, the year of the first revolts against the British and Zionists in Palestine until the year of the city’s destruction. He seeks to exorcise a feeling of shame and humiliation that long accompanied the image of his father and also his town, occupied by Israelis in 1967.
fiction, Mohamad Malas, Syria 1992, color, wide screen, 116 min, Arabic with English or French subtitles
more about the film
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4. PANOPTIC in Kurdistan
Rana Eid's essayist documentary is invited in September to the Duhok International Film Festival (Kurdistan).
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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5. AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN in Palestine
Firas Khoury's film is invited to the Elia Short Film Festival in East-Jerusalem in September.
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. events
Irit Neidhardt (mec film) is a guest speaker at the Palestine Arts Film Festival, a Fiction and Short Film Festival on Palestine from September 5th till 7th, 2019 at KOSMOS Zurich (Switzerland) more and presents a paper at the Workshop Cinema and the City, 12.-13. September 2019, at ZMO in Berlin (Germany) more.
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