Events

MAPUTO NAKUZANDZA

The first light of day in Maputo – Radio Maputo Nakudzandza reports the disappearance of a bride. People saunter home from nightclubs, do morning sports, a tourist roams the streets, meanwhile others are getting up and heading off to work. For 24 hours, Ariadine Zampaulo lures us through the simultaneity of happenings in Mozambique’s capital. In her kaleidoscopic portrait, multiple realities and fictions mingle and collide in dense stories. Moments of connectedness, planned and unexpected encounters spin a narrative web across Maputo. Dance choreographies on rooftops, poetry in the streets, the throbbing soundscapes of a city riddled with tokens of a colonial past. In sublime gestures, this film captures the vivid yet subtle nuances of an urban polyphony in the present.

ALBAHR ‘AMAMAKUM

Unexpectedly, Jana is back in Beirut. In Paris, she has abandoned her art studies and countless odd jobs. What motivated Jana’s abrupt return remains uncertain. Back with her parents, it is difficult to readjust and attend to her former life, family, and friends. Only Adam seems to grasp Jana’s plight – together they embark on an atmospheric trip through the city at night. While the newly built city quarters pass by contemplatively like ghost towns, and the camera tries to catch glimpses of the sea amidst new urban architecture, breath-taking shots of Beirut with multilayered visual and acoustic atmospheres frame the protagonists’ existential emptiness. In this compelling debut feature, Ely Dagher entwines the becoming of a crisis-ridden Beirut with young Jana’s pursuit of meaning and identity.