Directing
We follow the journey of former soldier Nassif, who fled the war in Iraq by hiding in dark cinemas. During this time, he used to watch his favorite film, “Papillon” (1973), starring Steve McQueen. Nowadays, he is looking for this film among the Iraqi cinemas’ ruins. The search for this lost film copy in the old and obsolete cinemas becomes the sole purpose of Nassif and his primary motivation to leave his house. “Take me to the Cinema” allows us to discover Baghdad through Nassif’s eyes as he takes us to streets that contrast with his silent and quiet world. A lot has changed in today’s Iraq. The street where cinema theaters were is now a market that sells military uniforms. It is crowded with young men, fitting military shirts and shoes. The quest for “Papillon” becomes the quest of character, who does not want to acknowledge the transformations of his city, and who wants to cling on to its luminous past through the light of cinema and his inner world.
Panoptic explores Lebanon's schizophrenia. Depicting a nation thriving for modernity while ignoring the vices preventing it from achieving its goal, director Rana Eid examines this paradox through sound, iconic monuments and secret hideouts.
"Nasr Hamed Abou Zayd is not Godot, and the expectation promised by the title is misleading: this great gentleman is present in almost every shot. Who is he? An Egyptian Muslim theologian of international reputation, he has published exegeses of the Koran which led to his being condemned for apostasy. Exile, forced divorce from his wife Ibtihal Younes since his marriage was subject to annulment, separation from his son, such are the consequences of his writings. But Abou Zayd has not given up, residing in Leiden in the Netherlands, he continues, always on the road, to give conferences, to explain with great serenity his positions in public debates, on television, etc. C It is this particularly impressive dedication that Mohammad Ali Atassi's camera recorded over a period of six years.
While evoking the language of film noir, Memories for a Private Eye investigates a personal archive, foregrounding a fictional detective—Marc McPhearson from Otto Preminger's Laura—to help unfold deep and traumatic memories.
Science fiction is a rare genre in the otherwise rich and diverse history of Egyptian mainstream cinema. One exception is the film "The Master of Time", directed by Kamal El Sheikh in 1987. In this film, the main character, a scientist named Mr. Kamel, is obsessed with the idea of immortality. Through radical editing, Lebanese artist and filmmaker Rania Stephan captures the quintessence of this obsession. In her film, she eliminates all fictional elements from the original and retains only the transition shots featuring doors, gates, and all forms of crossing and passing through.
This short video was shot in the urgency of the Israeli war against Lebanon in July 2006. It sheds light on how the Lebanese would go about their daily lives during and right after the war. Far from the bombastic frenzy of media broadcast, the tragedy of war is recorded with compassion, simplicity, and even humor.
This haunting and beautifully formed documentary is a meditation on the life of Egyptian screen legend Soad Hosni, who starred in eighty-two feature films between 1959 and 1991. Hosni’s mysterious death in London in 2001 sent shockwaves through the Arab world, and this is the first film which look into her life and work. Using filmic montage, director and video artist Rania Stephan reveals the diverse modes of female representation embodied in Hosni's charismatic roles, and creates an ebullient picture of the iconic actress who captivated the modern Arab imagination.
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A series of vignettes with average Lebanese citizens responding to the war with Israel in 2006.
A filmic dialogue between exiled Syrian writer Samar Yazbek and the filmmaker that tries to ask vital questions about cinema and literature in the face of war, death and violence. Focusing on the relation between the spoken word, the literary text and the act of listening, the film explores the writer’s work with her own tools: words. As the war intensifies, the dilemma increases: to speak or not to speak becomes a central question in the film. But if the filmed conversations are interrupted, who will tell the story of the voiceless? A pertinent poetic and political testimony of our troubled times.
The film is a journey following the traces of the old railway line, linking Lebanon to Palestine, an extension of the so-called Orient Express to the North and Egypt Lines to the South, today out of service. Based on material originally filmed in 1999, it gives voice to marginalised rural and transient residents living near derelict stations. By embedding Polaroid photographs into moving images, the film is also reminiscent of memory and its mechanisms, thus becoming itself an interrogation of what happened in between, now and then. A personal vision of post-civil war Lebanon.
This short video was shot in the urgency of the Israeli war against Lebanon in July 2006. It sheds light on how the Lebanese would go about their daily lives during and right after the war. Far from the bombastic frenzy of media broadcasts, the tragedy of war is recorded with compassion, simplicity, and even humor.
