Before I Forget / Cinema Árabe Feminino
The 2nd Arab Women’s Film Festival in Brazil shows a selection of over 40 Arab films that stand as fissures, fighting territories, and spaces of existence. Films that exist among other films, dialoguing either in collision or repulsion courses, but always in motion, creating connections and resignifications. Films that exist as organic beings, inserted in bodies within this borderless space that is our imagination. Films as expanded universes, as possibilities of celestial lands to plant new existences and resistances.
Curated by Brazilians Analu Bambirra, Carol Almeida, and Egyptian Alia Ayman, the Festival brings together distinct formats and genders: short, mid-length, and feature films, among fiction and documentaries, which approach political matters, social criticism, family conflicts, utopias, friendships, and masculinities. By promoting the Festival, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil reaffirms its support for cinematographic art and cultural exchange. Furthermore, CCBB offers the public a free of charge opportunity of knowing the diversity of the Arab film industry.
The program is composed of a “Filmic Universe” divided into six film sets named after constellations: Canis Major, Andromeda, Serpent, Ursa Major, Belt of Orion, and Red Moon. Weekly, the audience will be able to watch a set of films online. The festival will also host debates featuring the filmmakers, roundtables, and a masterclass with director Larissa Sansour.
Among the selected films is Before I Forget / ‘abl ma ‘ansa (2018) directed by our fellow Mariam Mekiwi. A science-fiction story set in an indistinct coastal region, between land and sea, above and below water. El Captain disappears, one of his disciples takes a journey in the ocean to cut off the internet cable, the water level is rising, an amphibian woman appears at the shore looking for her mother, and the memories of two women in a ward intertwine. Scientist Dr. Sharaf is trying to congregate all of them – the members of the secret society of amphibians – in an attempt to save the world