Cycle: Dialoguing with the look. Euro-Arabic co-productions.
In October the Fundación Tres Culturas offers a cycle of Euro-Arabic co-productions with the aim of placing value on cultural cooperation between countries and continents resulting in films, documentaries and short films of great quality and a variety of themes.
France gets the upper hand in these co-productions with French-speaking countries like Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia, achieving permanence and diffusion of their language and offering young film-makers the chance to make their first works while becoming patron countries for Arabic and African cinema.
This cycle is organised in collaboration with the Latinarab Festival and FCAT
Programme:
Tuesday 3rd of October, 8.30pm
A la espera de las golondrinas (Waiting for the swallows)
Karim Moussaoui, Algeria, France, Germany, Qatar. 2017. 113 min
Synopsis
If in his magnificent medium-length film “Les jours d’avant”, Karim Moussaoui depicts the “black years” in Algeria from the point of view of two teenagers, in his first feature film he depicts three characters from different generations and social situations through whom he explores the symptoms of a society that cannot overcome the emotional numbness after the civil war. This triptych in which the witness to an aggression opts not to get involved, a young woman has a moment of doubt on her way to another city to get married and a doctor is beset by a dark secret from the past, advances like relay in which the characters find a chance to take responsibility for their actions and their future. A director who does not lose faith and that one day the swallows will, finally, reach Algeria. Christian L. Mouroux
Tuesday 10th of October, 8.30pm
Honey and Old Cheese
Yassine El Idrissi, Holland, Morocco,2016. 25 min.
Synopsis
Hassan has obtained a visa. He is getting ready to leave behind the village of Tizi N’oucheg, in the mountains, and meet up with his father in Holland. All of the inhabitants know that soon he will be a foreigner. In a moving and, on occasions, comic portrait, Hassan says goodbye to his friends, his land and his traditions.
La ley del cordero.(Law of Lamb)
Lotfi Achour, France, Tunisia. 2016. 15 min
Synopsis
The only African film selected for the Palme d’Or in the short-film section of the Cannes Film Festival, Law of Lamb was filmed in the same region as Star Wars. In an arid desert in Tunisia a grandfather and his grandson are transporting sheep. Suddenly, they meet two policemen who swing between benevolence and suspicion. It is hard to guess their intentions. From this situation develops a strange, worrying atmosphere, maddening, between the psychological battle and the black humour. The director, Lotfi Achour, knew how to perfectly combine a script designed with impeccable aesthetics for his first “couscous western”.
Un sábado a la mañana sin acción (A Saturday morning without action)
Sofia Djama (2013) France, Algeria, 2013. 28 Min.
A night in Algiers, a young woman called Myassa is attacked by a rapist who fails in his attempt. Then she arrives home where the old water system fails again and she can’t have a shower. The next morning, Myassa gives herself two goals: tell the police about the attack the previous night and find a plumber. Trying to achieve her goals, she faces a lot of difficulties before another, final, face-to-face with the rapist.
Tuesday 17th of October, 8.30pm
Akher Ayam El Madina
Tamer El-Said. Germany, Egypt, Arab Emirates, England.2016. 118 min.
Synopsis
The centre of El Cairo, year 2009. Khalid, a 35 year old film-maker is struggling to make a film that captures the spirit of his city while his life slowly withers away. With the help of his friends, who send him photos of their lives in Beirut, Bagdad and Berlin, he finds enough strength to overcome his difficulties and enjoy the beauty of the last days of the city.
Tuesday 24th of October, 8.30pm
Esperanzas en llamas (Hopes in flames)
Lotfi Achour. Tunisia, France. 2016. 85 min.
Synopsis
Tunis, 14th of January 2011. In the middle of the night, Ben Ali falls and, meanwhile, Zeined, Alyssa and Houssine dominate the city from the roof of a building. A place where their three destinies will be united after a physical and moral drama. Hopes in flames, eponym of Victor Hugo’s poem, is not a film about the Tunisian revolution, it is a picture of the days that followed and those that are to come, difficult and exasperating. Never black or white, never Manichaean, the work is as subtle as its characters: whether they were revolutionaries or officials, all of them are described as beings able to make mistakes without losing their humanity. All, beyond their convictions, are lost on the same path, depending on forces they don’t control. Kahina Boudarène
Tuesday 31st of October, 8.30pm
Mimosas
Oliver Laxe. Spain, France, Morocco,, Qatar. 2016, 96 min.
Synopsis
A caravan accompanies an old, moribund Sheikh a Sijilmasa. His last will is to be buried alongside his loved ones but death comes in the middle of the Moroccan Atlas. The caravan people, afraid of the mountain, refuse to continue carrying the body. Ahmed and Said, two hustlers who are travelling with them, offer to take the body until Sijilmasa. In another world, parallel and remote, Shakib is chosen to travel to the mountains. His task is clear: he has to help the improvised caravan men to reach their destination. Shakib also doubts, it is his first mission.