Projects 2020/2021

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

With intimate access to Tiba and her friends we join young Iraqi women and men who side by side are fighting for freedom and democracy and to overthrow the whole political establishment. Tiba’s life is changing dramatically while she is taking part in the biggest youth movement in Iraq history.

DESTINY

Yaser Talebi and Elahe Nobkht

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 and Elahe Nobkht

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…

WRITING HAWA

Najiba Noori

Afghan documentary maker Najiba Noori offers not only a loving and intimate portrait of her mother Hawa, but also shows in detail how the arduous improvement of the position of women is undone by geopolitical violence. The film follows the fortunes of Noori’s family, who belong to the Hazaras, an ethnic group that has suffered greatly from discrimination and persecution.

Hawa was married off at the age of 13 to her much older husband, who now needs care. She has fought tirelessly to ensure a better future for her children and despite her husband’s complaints, is determined to learn to read and start her own business. She therefore watches in dismay as the United States prepare a deal with the Taliban. Meanwhile, she takes her 14-year old granddaughter Zahra under her wing, who has run away from her abusive father.

When the last US troops withdraw from Kabul in August 2021, a lightning-fast Taliban takeover ensues. Najiba’s niece has to return to the village she escaped from, while Najiba has only minutes to decide whether to flee to Paris with nine kilograms of luggage and two hard drives filled with film material.

I’VE GOT THE POWER

Rüzgar Buşki and Ekin Çalışır

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

“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 and Hasan Demirtas

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 and Zeina Badran

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

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 and Gargi Chakrabarti

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

“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

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.

MY FATHER AND QADDAFI

Jihan

A daughter unravels the disappearance of her father, the peaceful opposition leader to Qaddafi, and pieces together her mother’s 19-year search to find him. Without any memory of her father, she tries to reconnect with him and reconcile with her Libyan identity.

SHE WAS NOT ALONE

Hussein Al-Asadi

She Was Not Alone is a poetic meditation on the life of Fatima, a nomadic woman who lives alone in Iraq’s wetlands with her animals. As ecological collapse forces migration to the city, our collective fates become intertwined with hers: Will she stay or be dispossessed of everything she knows and loves?

THE STORY OF A PINK RIDING HAT

Sidar İnan Erçelik

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.

Close Up