Film Archive

Filmstill The Mother of All Lies

The Mother of All Lies

Kadib abyad
Asmae El Moudir
Audience Competition 2023
Documentary Film
Egypt,
Morocco,
Qatar,
Saudi Arabia
2023
97 minutes
Arabic
Subtitles: 
German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing, English

Traumas have often inspired filmmakers to contrast a documentary narrative with visual alienations. Asmae El Moudir chooses the form of a doll-populated miniature of the Casablanca neighbourhood where she grew up. In 1981, before she was born, a massacre took place there. The police and the Moroccan king’s military forces shot hundreds of participants of the so-called bread riots, who were protesting against continuously rising food prices. The detailed small-scale models – El Moudir’s father, a bricklayer, built the big versions with stone and cement! – may illustrate the events, but they also mark the distance to a history that lacks images and has long been concealed in Morocco.

The lack of images is mirrored in the family context. Why are there no childhood photos of her, the director wonders. Why does her mother finally present her with a single picture which, however, shows another girl? This film, cleverly constructed in every respect, finally gathers the family members around the miniatures of their neighbourhood. The constellation does not promise a collective truth, but, at least, a dispute of memories.

Jan-Philipp Kohlmann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Asmae El Moudir
Cinematographer
Hatem Nechi
Editor
Asmae El Moudir
Producer
Asmae El Moudir
Co-Producer
Mark Lotfy
Sound
Abdelaziz Glassine
Sound Design
Michael Fawzy
Score
Nass El Ghiwane
World Sales
Andrea Hock
Winner of: Golden Dove (Audience Competition)
Filmstill The Other Side of Everything

The Other Side of Everything

Druga strana svega
Mila Turajlić
Homage Mila Turajlić 2022
Documentary Film
Serbia,
France,
Qatar
2017
104 minutes
Serbian
Subtitles: 
English

A door that has been closed for seventy years serves as a MacGuffin in Mila Turajlić’s double portrait of her mother and her mother country of Yugoslavia. That very door has divided the bourgeois family apartment ever since Tito’s communists assigned several rooms to proletarians in need of shelter. Srbijanka Turajlić never cared a fig for her neighbours. But when Serbian nationalists began to threaten the unity of her country, she turned into a fierce opponent of the Milošević regime. In a virtuoso montage of archive material and conversations with her mother, the filmmaker recaps the latter’s development while gaining a new perspective on the time of her own youth.

Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Mila Turajlić
Cinematographer
Mila Turajlić
Editor
Aleksandra Milovanovic, Sylvie Gadmer
Producer
Mila Turajlić, Carine Chichkowsky
Sound
Aleksandar Protić
Score
Jonathan Morali
Media Name: 8986de6e-bbee-46eb-ab90-f497cb630a44.jpg

Their Algeria

Leur Algérie
Lina Soualem
International Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Algeria,
France,
Switzerland,
Qatar
2020
70 minutes
Arabic,
French
Subtitles: 
English

After 62 years of marriage Aïcha Soualem is on her own again. Mabrouk, whom she has left, is nevertheless supplied by her daily with food and sugar cubes. Director Lina Soualem is interested in the relationship between her grandparents, who, as the last remaining Algerians in Thiers, France, look back on an eventful past. An empathic investigation all the way back to their native village of Laaouamer which leaves room for ambiguous emotions.

“Soualem” is the password which not only enables Lina Soualem to unlock the tiny, snow-covered village full of cousins in Algeria, which her grandparents left a long time ago. In a sense, “Soualem” is also the title of this gentle investigation of a granddaughter. And Laaouamer, that little place in Algeria, is only the final destination of a long journey which may be narrated via geographical coordinates but interweaves them closely with biographical and emotional ones. Aïcha and Mabrouk rarely talk about themselves. Instead, self-affixed wall badges speak: “The world’s best mom lives here” or “Welcome to the world’s best grandma’s”. To learn more about the couple, whose lives were shaped by French colonialism, Lina Soualem uses private photos and videos. Her investigation is full of love: persistent, but never prying.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Lina Soualem
Editor
Gladys Joujou
Producer
Marie Balducchi
Co-Producer
Karima Chouikh, Palmyre Badinier
Score
Julie Tribout, Rémi Durel
World Sales
Anna Berthollet
Nominated for: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize