Country: Francia, Belgio, Qatar | Year: 2017 | Lenght: 102′
MedFilm Festival 2017 // Amore & Psiche
Algiers, a few years after the end of the civil war. Amal and Samir have decided to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary in a restaurant. During the journey, they exchange their impressions of Algeria: Amal talks about the lost illusions, while Samir talks about the need to overcome them. Meanwhile, their son Fahim and his friends Feriel and Reda roam a hostile Algiers, ready to steal their youth.
SOFIA DJAMA
Born in Oran in 1979, Sofia Djama moved to Algiers to complete her studies and graduate in Literature. At the beginning of the 2000s, he began to write a collection of short stories with young Algerians as protagonists. Mollement, a samedi matin, the adaptation of one of these stories, receives two awards at the 2011 Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival. These awards encourage her to pursue a career in the world of cinema. Les Bienheureux (2017), his first feature film, is selected in Venice in the Orizzonti section.
One evening in Algiers, Myassa is the victim of a rapist who, however, cannot get an erection. Back home he can’t take a shower because the old pipe doesn’t work. The next morning, Myassa has two goals: to report the violence suffered and to call a plumber. She will come face to face with his attacker …
SOFIA DJAMA
Born in Oran in 1979, Sofia Djama moved to Algiers to complete her studies and graduate in Literature. At the beginning of the 2000s, he began to write a collection of short stories with young Algerians as protagonists. Mollement, a samedi matin, the adaptation of one of these stories, receives two awards at the 2011 Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival. These awards encourage her to pursue a career in the world of cinema. Les Bienheureux (2017), his first feature film, is selected in Venice in the Orizzonti section.
The Department of Oriental Studies – La Sapienza and MEDFILM FESTIVAL present the Internship Study Day “Equal and different: Iso-MedFilm Festival 2020-2021”. During the meeting, the website of the “Voices and Images of Intercultural Dialogue in the Mediterranean” project and the Medfilm Festival archive at the DISO Library will be presented.
The webinar will be held on the zoom platform, Monday 15 February 2021, from 2.00pm to 6.30pm Participation is open to all stakeholders Registration with a nominative request email at the address webinartirocinio@gmail.com
Program
Introduction: Franco D’Agostino, Director of the ISO Department; Ginella Vocca, President of MedFilm Festival-MFF; Laura Guazzone, Internship Manager.
h. 14.15-14.25 Presentation of the VOCIMED.IT WEB SITE of the Third Mission Iso project “Voices and images from dialogue intercultural in the Mediterranean ”, L. Guazzone, Iso Sapienza and V. Flora, MFF.
FIRST PART (moderated by Guazzone, directed by Flora)
h. 14.30-15.00 “Human Rights” Theme: Human Rights in Contemporary Islam. An open debate – Francesco Zappa, Iso Sapienza.
h. 15.00-15.10 Debate
h. 15.10-15.45 Theme “cultural dialogue”: The dialogue between cinema and contemporary Arab literature: the Egyptian microcosm – Ada Barbaro, Iso Sapienza.
h.15.45-15.55 Debate
h. 16.00- 16.30 MEDFILM FESTIVAL SHORT Debate
SECOND PART (moderated by Zappa, directed by Barbaro)
h. 16.30-17.00 “Political dialogue” theme: The Mediterranean that unites and divides: contemporary history of an idea – Laura Guazzone, Iso Sapienza.
h. 17.00-17.100 Debate
h. 17.10-17.40 Gender issue theme: Body, awareness and freedom. Paths in Mediterranean cinema – Veronica Flora, MFF
17.40-17.50 Debate
h. 17.50-18.30 What intercultural dialogue in the Mediterranean? Concluding remarks and debate
Mona is a young French woman. Her life is shaken when she learns that her father was Moroccan. With a name (Mahmoud Saber), a black and white photo and a love letter addressed to her mother, Mona sets out for Morocco in search of her roots. Her journey between Casablanca and Essaouira will make her discover the different realities of a country that she believed was far away.
Tamara lives and works in Italy. He takes care of an old lady named Paola. Her job allows her to save money and support her children who live with their father in one of Georgia’s small villages. During this time, her husband dies in a car accident but his illegal status does not allow Tamara to leave Italy. Unable to attend his funeral, she decides to attend her husband’s funeral by long distance cell phone.
Director’s statement
The film is about women who live and work illegally in developed countries. Their only mission is to save enough to support family members living in Georgia.
Gender equality, also known as equality between the sexes, gender equality, sexual equality or gender equality, is a condition in which people receive equal treatment, with equal ease of access to resources and opportunities, regardless of gender.
Born in Algeria in 1944, he is a director and screenwriter who studied at the Institut National du Cinéma in Algiers and then at L’Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris. Since his debut film Omar Gatlato he has been directing films in both France and Algeria. His work has screened at numerous international festivals.
Filmography (selection) 1976 Omar Gatlato 1978 Moughamarat Batal 1983 L’Homme Qui Regardait les Fenêtres 1986 Un Amour à Paris 1993 Bab El Oued City 1995 Salut Cousin! 2000 L’autre Monde 2003 Chouchou 2005 Bab El Web 2009 Harragas 2010 Tata Bakhta; TV movie 2012 El-Taïb (The Repentant) 2013 Esstouh (The Rooftops) 2015 Madame Courage 2017 Tahqiq Fel Djenna (Investigating Paradise).
Nouri Bouzid, born in Sfax in 1945, is a Tunisian director. Two of his films (L’Homme de cendres and Making of) won the Carthage Film Days’ Golden Tanit in 1986 and 2006 respectively. From 1968 to 1972 he studied cinema in Belgium. He was assistant director on the set of Le Larron de Pasquale Festa Campanile in 1979. He spent five years in prison for his political beliefs. In 1986, his first feature film, L’Homme de cendres, the story of a young man who remembers the traumas of his childhood shortly before his wedding, was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. His next film, Les Sabots en or, is also from 1988. Bezness, through the portrait of a man played by Abdellatif Kechiche, deals with male prostitution.
In addition to his films, he participates in the dialogue writing of Halfaouine, the son of the terraces and A summer at the Goulette by Férid Boughedir, The Sultan of the Medina by Moncef Dhouib but also The Silences of the Palace and The Season of Men by Moufida Tlatli. Filmography The Ash Man (1986) gets the Golden Tanit at the 1986 Carthage Film Festival Les Sabots en o (1988) The Gulf War… and after? (1991) Bezness (1992) Tunisiennes (original title Bent Familia) (1997) Poupées d’argile (2002) Making of (2006) Millefeuille (2012) Les Épouvantails (2019) gets the Golden Tanit during the 2006 Carthage Film Festival
Wednesday 11 November 2020 at 17:00 – Online presentation of ARABPOP as part of the MedFilm Festival “Readings from the Mediterranean” session, live streaming from the Festival’s Facebook page.
Participants:
Chiara Comito, co-curator and author,
Anna Gabai, author,
Luce Lacquaniti, author.
Debate moderated by Ada Barbaro, professor of Arabic literature at Sapienza in Rome.
Introduction by Veronica Flora, MedFilm Festival
In Italy, the so-called Arab Springs of 2011 have often been analyzed by commentators and journalists only as unexpected outbursts of violence or as the result of power games between Western states. The short-sightedness of a thought flattened on Islamophobic positions prevented us from really knowing who went down to the squares of Tunis, Cairo or Damascus: a young generation that asked for freedom, calling into question political, religious and gender affiliations. This spirit of freedom has been collected and elaborated by Arab intellectuals, artists and writers who in the cinema, on the walls of their cities, in novels, poems and songs have told the genesis and the consequences of the protest movements. The contributions of this volume intend to give credit to this incredible cultural season, and to make the Italian public aware of the literature, music, films, artistic and theatrical works born from this period of revolt.
“I believe that revolutions must not lie in order not to lose their credibility. I think they must collect the statements of witnesses, in which details are intertwined that tell of the pain, the assault on the cities, the open fire without restraint on the demonstrators. […] We need truth in times of war, because human life and death are not things to be taken lightly. We need a dose of innocent lie, as in writing, in times of peace and love, to sweeten existence in the face of prevailing cruelty.“
Khaled Khalifa, Syrian writer
Chiara Comito is an Arabist, has a degree in Languages and Relations and Institutions of Asia and Africa. In 2012 he founded Editoriaraba, the main Italian website on contemporary Arabic literature. He has written for several newspapers “Internazionale”, “Vice”, “Arab Media Report”. He works as a geopolitical analyst dealing with the Middle East and collaborates with literary and film festivals, publishing houses, bookshops and libraries to promote Arab culture.
Silvia Moresi is an Arabist and translator, teaches Contemporary Arabic Culture and Literature at the Istituto di Alti Studi SSML Carlo Bo, in Bari. She has translated, for the Jouvence publishing house, the anthology My most beautiful poems (2016) by Nizar Qabbani and the poem collection Eleven Planets (2018) by Mahmud Darwish. Since 2017 she is the author, for “Q Code Magazine”, of the column Atlante Letterario Arabo, translated into French and republished in the magazine “Orient XXI”.
