Projects 2019/2020
July 24, 2020Projects 2021/2022
October 19, 2021
Projects 2020/2021
CLOSE UP
After a very competitive selection process, 16 powerful documentary projects were selected for the 2020-2021 Close Up Program! The projects were selected amongst more than 80 Applications from all across Southwest Asia & North Africa, including: Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kurdish-Turkish, Kurdish-Syrian, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey & UAE. We would like to thank all the filmmakers that applied, they all faced tremendous competition!
BAGHDAD ON FIRE
Karrar Al-Azzawi, IRAQ
With intimate access to Noor and her friends we join young Iraqi women and men who side by side are fighting the regime and Iraqi Iranian militias. Noor’s life is changing dramatically while she is taking part in the biggest youth movement in Iraq history.
DESTINY
Yaser Talebi, IRAN / Producer: Elahe Nobkht, IRAN
Sahar is an 18-year-old girl, struggling whether to stay with her disabled father and take care of him as a respect to traditional values, or to go after her own dreams in the modern world.
DREAM’S GATE
Negin Ahmadi, IRAN / Producer: Elahe Nobkht, IRAN
Negin, an Iranian young woman, after her divorce, goes to Syria to find her real identity as a woman, by visiting female soldiers, who are fighting against ISIS and fighting for women’s rights. However, behind the armed soldiers, Negin does not find the women she expected…
HAWA
Najiba Noori, AFGHANISTAN
40 years after her arranged marriage as a child, Hawa is eager to finally begin the life that was taken from her. Hawa wants to be literate and have the joyful experiences she never had as a youth. However, Hawa is once again blocked by the oppressive barriers of the Taliban regime, as she tries to liberate herself as an independent woman.
I’VE GOT THE POWER
Rüzgar Buşki, TURKEY / Producer: Ekin Çalışır, TURKEY
Amidst rising oppression in Turkey, two women, a doctor and a sex worker join forces to confront death and seek healing after the tragic deaths of their loved ones. They transform pain into power by queering grief.
IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE
Rachida Al Garani, MOROCCO / Producer: Jurgen Buedts, BELGIUM
“In My Father’s House” tells the story of a Moroccan-Belgian family seen through my eyes, my camera as the oldest daughter trying to find answers on the trauma’s of my past. It’s an odyssey of a daughter marked by exile evoked through confession, pain, separation, grief, and joy.
LIFE BEYOND BORDERS
Haydar Demirtas, KURDISH-TURKISH / Producer: Hasan Demirtas, KURDISH-TURKISH
Eyoub, was the main character in a film called A Time for Drunken Horses, he is portraying a young smuggler boy in the film. He envisioned a better life for himself then he became an actual smuggler as he grew up. A disabled painter and an award- winning boxer are smugglers as well on the Iran – Iraq borders, who experience life threatening struggles on an everyday basis
MY COUSIN ALI: A HIJACKER TO SOME, A HERO TO OTHERS
Mira Shaib, LEBANON / Producer : Zeina Badran, LEBANON
For generations, Ali Shaib was portrayed as hijacker and the villain behind the most infamous bank robbery in Lebanon’s history. For the young men and women demonstrating in the streets of Beirut today, this controversial political activist, leftist guerrilla fighter and poet, has been hailed as their modern-day Robin Hood. Mira, a young relative to Ali, takes us on an intimate journey as she faces her family’s past as well as the situation of her country to uncover the truth about her cousin, Ali, and the reasons why he still resonates with the young generation in Lebanon today.
NO OTHER LAND
Basel Adaraa, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Balal, PALESTINE/ISRAEL
For the past ten years, Basel, a young Palestinian activist, has been filming his community being destroyed by Israeli soldiers. During the darkest year of his life, he develops an unlikely relationship with a similarly aged Israeli journalist – who wants to join his struggle.
NOTHING CALLED HOME
Arkus, UAE / Producer: Gargi Chakrabarti, UAE
Survivors of the Christchurch mosque attack, Iraqi immigrants Adeeb along with his son, Ali, take us on their 24-year long, search to find a safe home for their family.
Q
Jude Chehab, LEBANON
“God works in mysterious ways and so do women…”
For over fifty years a Syrian movement has been secretly growing into the largest Muslim women’s organization in the world. Through a generational lens, Q takes us deep into the mysterious, unspoken of world of the Qubaysiat, the regime-loving Sufis turned cult through my mother, my grandmother and I’s relationship to the group.
SAVOY
Zohar Wagner, ISRAEL
Kochava Levi, a 31-year-old housewife of Yemeni descent, was taken hostage during an attack on the Savoy hotel in Tel Aviv (March 1975). Over the course of one night, she transformed herself into a fearless heroine. However, by dawn, she was left with nothing but shame.
SEARCHING FOR KIKHIA
Jihan Kikhia, LIBYA
A daughter unravels the disappearance of her father, the democratic and peaceful opposition leader to Colonel Qaddafi, as she pieces together her mother’s 19-year search to find him. Inspired by her father’s legacy and her mother’s stories, she constructs a new understanding of the man she never knew.
SHE WAS NOT ALONE
Hussein Al-Assadi, IRAQ
Fatima is a nomadic woman live alone, with her beloved animals in the Iraqi marshes. But as the climate changes create harsh obstacles, Fatima may be forced to move to the city, and lose her most cherished possessions, her independence and her animals.
THE STORY OF A PINK RIDING HAT
Sidar İnan Erçelik, TURKEY
The Story of the Pink Helmet takes us on intimate journey of Zulfiye, the first female jokey in Turkey; it oscillates between past and present, unveiling damaging effects of uprooting and forced migration that her family suffered. It’s a story of pain and strength, the healing power of love and the serendipitous force of resilience.
