1. IN VITRO in Toulouse and Haifa
2. ERASED,___ ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE in Zurich
3. PANOPTIC in Dornbirn and Tunis
4. THE DREAM (al-Manam) in Paris
5. DVD of the month - HAUNTED
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1. IN VITRO in Toulouse and Haifa

Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind's Sci-Fi shows in March at the Palestinian Film Festival in Toulouse (France) as well as at the Arab Film Festival in Haifa (Palestine).

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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2. ERASED,___ ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE in Zurich

The feature documentary is presented by director Ghassan Halwani im Rahmen at the conference Imagining Absence. Film and the Politics of Disappearance in Colombia and Lebanon in Zurich (Switzerland) in March. The DVD can be purchased via mecfilm-shop.com now.

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
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3. PANOPTIC in Dornbirn and Tunis

Rana Eid's essay documentary shows in March at Spielboden cinema in Dornbirn (Austria) as well as in the framework of the program of the Spring School „Present and Future of Urban Frontier Zones“ in Tunis (Tunisia) .

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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4. THE DREAM (al-Manam) in Paris

Mohamad malas' classic of Arab documentary cinema shows in the ciné-club of the Ciné Palestine Festival in Paris (France) at the University of Paris VIII on March, 19th, 2020.

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. DVD of the month - HAUNTED

Filmmaker Liwaa Yazji weaves conversations with friends, family and internal refugees from the Syrian civil war into an eloquent meditation on the physical, emotional and psychological toll of displacement. (tiff)

buy the DVD | view the film online

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.
documentary, Liwaa Yazji, Syria 2014, 112 or 63 min,  Arabic with English ST, several other languages are available
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