Projects 2020/2021
November 27, 2020Projects 2022/2023
October 19, 2022
Projects 2021/2022
Projects 2021-2022
CLOSE UP
We are excited to share the powerful documentary projects that are selected to participate at the Close Up 2021-2022 Edition. This year’s cohort of directors and producers hails from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.
BRIDGE
Deniz Tortum & Producer: Fırat Sezgin
Set in Istanbul between 1970-73, BRIDGE (in development) is an essay documentary that focuses on the construction of the first Bosphorus bridge using archival and new footage. Seen from a current perspective where our future is at stake due to climate change, it reflects on a time when we thought we would control the future.
DON QUIXOTE OF KABUL
Nemat Khoshahmadi
Mr Watandost, who is one of the Hazara tribes in Afghanistan, has been fighting against corruption, poverty, and ethnocentrism for many years and as a result, he faces many problems and bitter stories on this way.
ENTANGLED HOPEFUL BIRD
Dawood Hilmandi and Ezatullah Alidost
Like many Afghan children, we were born in the middle of the hot flames of war and the battlefield. As long as we can remember, our memories are filled with terrifying pictures — limbs and dead bodies of civilians, wounded soldiers, an amputated leg of a father, and massacre of innocent people whose voices were never heard. This documentary aims to tell the parallel stories of Afghan men and women who are as described entangled within a dark and suppressed situation, yet still they stay hopeful and resilient through these times.
HOLLYWOODGATE
Ibrahim Nash’at & Producer: Talal Derki
The day after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban immediately move to occupy the Hollywood Gate complex, claimed to be a former CIA base in Kabul. The Taliban find what the most technologically advanced military in history left behind: aircrafts, weapons, and valuable military equipment. Baffled by the technology, Malawi Mansour, the newly assigned Air Force commander, orders his soldiers to inventory and repair everything they can. Mukhtar, motivated to one day conquer the world, arrives at Hollywood Gate aiming to build a high-ranking military career.
While Malawi Mansour and Mukhtar are focused on maximizing their own personal objectives, their comrades continue to repair the weapons left behind at Hollywood Gate. AK-47s that were once used by the US and NATO are now in the hands of the Taliban; helicopters and fighter jets that were thought to be destroyed now lethally bomb the opposition, creating untold collateral damage in the process; and the use of international documentarians for the purposes of propaganda is now underway.
Over the course of one year, the film exposes the transformation of a fundamentalist militia into a military regime.
HOT SPOT
Karin Kainer
Outstanding teens from all around the world including Palestinians & Israelis live and study together at a unique international boarding school for change, oasis of peace and sustainability, located at the heart of Israel, a burning conflict zone.
LIFE IN THE SHADOWS
Khadim Dai & Producer: Ilyas Yourish
A decade after surviving a deadly school bombing, a Hazara filmmaker uses his camera to navigate trauma, document his family’s daily life, and honor the memories of lost friends.
RADIO BERLIN
Sepehr Atefi and Kaveh Azarhoosh
In 1939 the first-ever Persian radio station was founded in Berlin, broadcasting Nazi propaganda across Iran. The station’s launch started a global propaganda war over Iran which continues to this day and fuelled the development of a network of pro-Nazi Iranian collaborators which played a crucial role in shaping Iranian history for the decade after the end of the world war.
THE GOVERNOR
Danel Elpeleg
My grandfather was a military governor of the Arab citizens of Israel after the establishment of the state. The positive image he presented to me slowly crumbles when I reveal his true actions as ruler. A journey that makes me ask questions about my personal-political heritage, and my present self.
