In June, AFLAMUNA.online presents five feature films from Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco, and Algeria, alongside two short films from Lebanon and Palestine.
Black Mouse
Between 1962 and 1975, Oscar Niemeyer was commissioned to design the Tripoli International Fair.As the structure was on the verge of completion, the events of the 1970s transfigured the structure into something gargantuan, incomplete, and abandoned - a white elephant. A biker's trip through Tripoli becomes the backdrop through which we explore these events from the standpoint of the city's residents. Along his journey, the fair catches his eye. He approaches its gates only to enter a state of delirium and be taken on a sonic journey along the Orient Express. Oscar Niemeyer takes a drag of his cigarette and waxes poetic. Somewhere along this stream of consciousness, he reflects on the relationship between structures and the society surrounding them, eventually commenting on what has become of the thing he built.
Letter to Obama
In a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, two boys decide to send a message to U.S.A. President Barack Obama through his Facebook page. They ask him to intervene and end the siege on the Gaza Strip, and they invite him and his wife to visit the Strip and witness people’s hardships there. But they never receive a response. They decided to use a small video camera to record a very angry video message addressed to Barack Obama from the people of the camp.
5 Minutes From Home
The Jerusalem Airport lies along the road that links Jerusalem to Ramallah. Occupied by the IOF since 1967, it sits 5 kilometers from Ramallah and 10 kilometers from Jerusalem. Today, a massive military checkpoint to the east of the runway blocks the Jerusalem-Ramallah road, turning it into adead-end street. Awwad discovers that life has not always been like this.
Kash Kash – Without Feathers We Can’t Live
Above Beirut flies an unexpected bearer of hope: the pigeon game "Kash Hamam". During the recent dystopian political collapse, we embark on a journey from roof to roof and observe a city in turmoil from the perspective of three pigeon players and a young girl fighting to release her own birds.
I See The Stars At Noon
In January 2004, in the northern Moroccan city of Tangiers, first-time documentary filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky met a 26-year-old Moroccan named Abdelfattah. He was a clandestine, one of many Africans who tried to cross the narrow Straits of Gibraltar and illegally enter Spain by stowing away on cargo ships or boarding inflatable rafts. By the end of their first meeting, Abdelfattah had agreed to let Saeed follow him to film every aspect of his journey, including his dealings with people-smugglers, his struggle to raise the 750 Euro fee, and his final days with his family before leaving.
I See The Stars At Noon offers a unique and revealing insight into Abdelfattah’s desperate attempt to reach Europe. At times humorous and disturbing, it intimately examines the circumstances that lead him to risk everything for an utterly uncertain future: his ambitions for a new life, his expectations of what Europe can offer him, and his frustration at the failures of his own Morocco.
This Little Father Obsession
A kaleidoscopic family film blending documentary and auto-fiction, This Little Father Obsession sees the complexity of Lebanese society confronted with the personal aspirations of an individual, and the weight of patriarchal tradition with the desire for emancipation. The filmmaker traces the portrait of a family in which he is trying to find his place. The last descendant, losing his fertility, attracted to men, he is wondering about filiations and confronts his father with his obsessions at a time when their family house in Beirut is waiting to be demolished. Truth unveils as they go on a quest together to find a forgotten relative. During this journey, the house seems to persist.
Bloody Beans (Loubia Hamra)
17 kids, relentless and insatiable in their gestures and screams, set everything on fire. They become grand heroes of an unwritten war; while the French Army fires at the OAS, the children loot the French Army: oil, chocolate, semolina, sugar, and even a war prisoner condemned to eat beans. But the war catches up with the beautiful adventure, and the beans are marred in blood.
Through the transgressive and powerful imagination of children, the movie depicts the end of French Algeria.