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Projects 2021/2022
October 19, 2021
Published by Alia on October 19, 2022
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Projects 2022/2023

Projects 2022-2023

CLOSE UP

We are excited to share the 17 powerful documentary projects that are selected to participate at the Close Up 2022-2023 Edition. This year’s cohort of directors  hail from Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Israel, Jordan/Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey.

BETWEEN WORLDS

Abdul Ghafar Faizyar, AFGHANISTAN


While fleeing to a safer place a family of four is torn apart. Khadija, a 25-year-old, heavily pregnant woman, fled Kabul with her husband and son. Since 2019 Khadija has lived with the newborn child in Germany. Her husband and 6-year-old son are stuck in Moria, Greece. For 3 years the family has been fighting to get together, but again and again the attempts are smashed by the European bureaucracy.

BITTER SUGAR

Ana Barjadze, GEORGIA


Nika, Gika and Levan are three brothers from a small town in Georgia, navigating life by only relying on each other, while their absent mother provides for the family from abroad. This is a universal and intimate story about the unique bond between brothers… And the children who are abandoned by parents who are forced to work abroad.

CHASING THE CRISIS

Parviz Majidov, AZERBAIJAN


The film follows the personal journey of the filmmaker and the effects of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War on the youth in Azerbaijan. Exploring memories and dreams as a way to access personal and collective traumas, the film provides an inside look into the devastating effects of the war and the growing antiwar resistance movement in Baku.

DEPOT-VENTE


Confidential project.

EVER SINCE I KNEW MYSELF

Maka Gogaladze, GEORGIA


Maka, the daughter of a strict and structure-loving math teacher, travels around Georgian classrooms and observes the children in the education process to portray the story of her own childhood. The images mirroring the author’s experiences are juxtaposed with the perspective of her mother, Nino, as she reflects on her attempts to transform her daughter from a restless child into a model citizen. This cinematic dialogue between two women representing different, Soviet and post-Soviet generations from Georgia, is an attempt to bridge differences.

HEART DON’T BE AFRAID

Ana Kvichidze, GEORGIA


Vardo is an 84-year-old spell caster. Suddenly, a 19- year-old queer boy arrives at her doorstep, with the desire to live in this world of magic and escape the reality. Everything changes when the local Orthodox Christian community decides to put an end to this and stop the sinners. Meanwhile, young spell caster keeps alive the tradition of coven meetings, but keeps it in secret until the local community finds it out.

HOMEMADE MULBERRY VODKA

Anzhela Frangyan, ARMENIA


A filmmaker and a soldier who both experienced the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, set off on a road trip to overcome the survivor’s guilt, returning to the wartorn areas, towards a common search for a renewed, mulberry-infused taste of life. Passing by fields of mulberry trees, we look for the region’s famous homemade mulberry vodka – something our friends from the Yerevan have asked for. But are they ready to listen to the stories that we will take with us as well?

I LOOK LIKE MY MOTHER

Amina Maher, IRAN


The film follows Amina Maher’s intimate and courageous journey to free herself from the constraints of norms, taboos and traditions. Her coming out as a trans woman, she pours her energy into her fight against rape culture, the patriarchy and her engagement for a future beyond cis-normativity. “Ten” (2002) by Abbas Kiarostami recorded ten-year-old Amina sitting in the passenger seat of her mother’s car without her consent. Now, she has taken the wheel, driving her filmmaker mother, Mania Akbari, through Berlin – in a new body and with a new name, Amina.

ONE OF THOSE CREATURES

Ali Ozkul, TURKEY


Emre is 29 years old, living alone in the apartment where he was born and raised as the only child of a conservative family in Istanbul. As a national bodybuilder and personal trainer, he is unhappy with his lifestyle. In search of a motivation he was looking for in this process during which he lost 18 kilos, his hopes are turned upside down by the global pandemic. One of Those Creatures is a body-thriller documentary that explores the relationship between identity and the body through the journey of feeling vulnerable as a bodybuilder.

OUR SEEDS

Erhan Arik & Meryem Yavuz, TURKEY


A farming couple lives with their children in a village, far from the city, in northeastern Turkey. Every spring, they sow 1500 years-old wheat seeds, that their family inherited from their ancestors, and when time is, they grind the grain in their mill and make the flour into bread. Although the harvest of this family-seed is difficult and its yield is low, they believe that this heritage is a source of life. The farming couple’s faith in nature begins to be tested by the emerging dreams of their children and the test deepens as the harvest of this year is harder than usual.

RED INK

Redha Menassel, ALGERIA


This documentary tells the fabulous epic of El Manchar (The Saw), the first satirical newspaper of the Arab world of the 90s in Algiers. Between learning about freedom of expression and a fierce fight against Islamist terrorism, these heroic cartoonists and journalists left their mark on Algerian society in indelible red ink. This story, 30 years later, takes humour as a weapon of resistance that flourished during the “Hirak”, but also echoes with the freedom of press which is once again heavily oppressed in Algeria.

ROSA’S ILLUSION

Anas El Hatimi, MOROCCO


Amine, a young researcher in the traditional arts, is transformed every evening into Rosa, a drag-queen who dances and sings poems dating back several centuries. He has a crazy project, that of creating the first voguing troupe in the Maghreb, a “House” made up of young artists who live and practice their art in their countries of origin. Rosa tries through her art to make known her fight for respect and equality. From Casablanca to New York, this film is a unique immersion in the hidden world of North African artists.

TRASH CEMETERY

Firas Rebiai, TUNISIA


Once a heavenly village in the outskirts of Tunis, Tunisia, El Attar turned into a living hell once Tunisia and the Mediterranean’s biggest landfill opened on its doorsteps with disastrous sanitary and environmental consequences. Al Attar villagers refuse to give up and engage in a fierce fight, understanding that either they or the landfill will survive. The Barbesha marginalized individuals whose survival depends on ragpicking items they deem worthy from the landfill intend to sway the pendulum in the direction of the already more powerful landfill.

WE

Grigor Poghosyan, ARMENIA


Biker Dero, dancer Anahit, musician Albert, teacher Robert and basketball trainer Artush are romantic creators who are living in once glorified but now despised town Vanadzor. They love the town, but does the government love the town too? Robert and Artush lost their youth dreams in Vanadzor during the collapse of Soviet Union. Are Dero, Anahit and Albert going to get the same fate?  Together five portraits create a description of a person’s fate in a town stuck between the Soviet Union and modern world.

WHY I LEFT

Fayssal Zaoui, MOROCCO


Salvador is a young Cameroonian who left his native village in pursuit of his dream to immigrate to Europe by walking, defying all odds. When he is so close to his goal, he meets Moroccan artists who open his eyes to his true quest. The meeting with Moroccan artists opened the door to another journey, of art and the search for oneself. Today Salvador lives and works in Morocco, he is an established painter and actor. This path, which he did not suspect, has made him an accomplished individual. Perhaps he had to leave his country and suffer a journey full of dangers to find his way?

YALLA PARKOUR

Areeb Zuaiter, JORDAN/PALESTINE


Ahmad’s passion for the sport of freedom drives him to break through the borders of his besieged city of Gaza. On the way out, his home becomes inaccessible. Along with Mohammed, Jehad, and Abdallah, Ahmad is part of a team that practices parkour, the sport of freedom, in Gaza, the city of restrictions. Yalla Parkour offers a slice of its characters’ lives over the span of 6 years. It depicts moments of poetry and candidness obtained through the director’s close relationship with her characters and the user-generated footage granted by the characters.

YUNG YIDDISH

Noa Ben-Shalom, ISRAEL


In his journey to save Yiddish libraries and cultural treasures, Mendy Cahan visits the homes of the last Yiddish speakers, and gives their beloved books a home in the center he established at Tel Aviv Central Station. However, his life’s work to salvage the Yiddish cultural heritage is facing yet another threat—the closing of the central bus station in Tel-Aviv, home to Mendy’s book center ‘Yung Yiddish’. The movie will tell the story of a dying culture and the hopeless struggle of a single Don Quixote to save it.

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Close Up

Close Up is a training, development, and mentorship program for documentary filmmakers from Southwest Asia and North Africa, founded by individual partners who have been working together for over a decade. Together we have supported more than 200 filmmakers from the region.

Projects 2022/2023

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