1. CHRONIC at Aflamouna
2. AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN in France
3. DIARY OF A MALE WHORE on Palestine Film Platform
4. 1982 NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO in Germany
5. DVD/ of the month - HAUNTED
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1. CHRONIC at Aflamouna

Mohamad Sabbah's feature fiction showed at Aflamouna in the first days of March. Lebanese Al-Akhabr found the 2017 film was ahead of it's time and published an extensive review about the film titled Our Dead Selves on the Brink of Chaos (Arabic).

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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2. AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN in France

Firas Khoury's short film is invited to the Ciné Palestine festival in Toulouse (France) in March.

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
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3. DIARY OF A MALE WHORE on Palestine Film Platform

The short film classic by Tawfik Abu Wael is showing online at the Palestine Film Platform in the first week of March.

Content
Esam, a young Arab war refugee who lives in Tel Aviv, makes his living as a male prostitute. His physical pleasure, that make him forget his hunger, remind him constantly of his childhood memories in his home village.
Inspired by the novel For Bread Alone by Mohammad Shukry.
short film, Tawfik Abu Wael, Palestine 2001, 14 min, colour, Arabic with English subtitles
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4. 1982 NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO in Germany

Highly acclaimed by the German press and with recommendation for schools, Oualid Mouaness' multi award winning feature showed on March 2nd at the communal cinema in Freiburg (in association with the Arab Cine Club).

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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5. DVD/ of the month - HAUNTED

"Haunted" is not a conventional film. Rather, it draws the viewer into the harrowing interim world of refugees and displaced people. (filmdienst)
While many conflict documentaries naturally perpetuate the demarcation between military and civilian actors, Yazji's presentation of her subjects reflects the condition of individuals where that distinction has been effectively eradicated. By challenging the discernibility of that seen through a snipers lens, sovereign verticality is for a moment symbolically refuted. (Ibraaz)

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.

DVD-info
Liwaa Yazji, Syria 2014, documentary, 112 min, Arabic
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, German, Turkish, Romanian
DVD PAL, region free

Subjects
Syria, Refugees, Home, Civil War, Escape, Expulsion, Citizen, Portrait

Awards
FID Marseilles: Special Mention of the First Film Prize
Festival of the Arab Film Gabès: Bronze Prize

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