Filmmaker Cléo Cohen’s Jewish grandparents migrated to France from Algeria and Tunisia in the 1960s. In her debut film QUE DIEU TE PROTÈGE she sets out to retrace her family’s history and find out whether or not she has to choose between her Jewish and her Arab cultural heritage. With a healthy dose of humour Cléo Cohen documents the conversations with her four grandparents, who turn out to be considerably less talkative than expected and rather underwhelmed by their granddaughter’s enthusiasm. Occasionally just letting herself drift, from her own thoughts to the writings of Albert Memmi on decolonisation, from the bathtub to dance sequences, her search eventually takes her to a completely different Tunis that is nothing like the city her grandmother left behind. (dp)
Credits
Producers: Rebecca Houzel & Maria Knoch
Editing: Saskia Berthod
Original Music: Patrick Bismuth
Sound Editing & mixing: Gilles Benardeau
Colour Grading: Graziella Zanoni
Intro
NEJMA – PERFORMATIVE RECORDED MONOLOGUE FROM AN ARAB-JEW IN FRANCE
Cléo Cohen
Outro
In the presence of the filmmaker.
