Guest: Khaled Abdulwahed

Neo Nahda
by May Ziadé, UK 2023, 13', English
When a young Arab woman (Eman Alali) in London finds a photograph of women cross-dressing in 1920s Cairo she starts a feverish journey that leads her to uncover lost histories and her own identity.

Background
by Khaled Abdulwahed, Germany 2023, 64', Arabic, German with english subtitles
An intimate phone call between father and son. Khaled Abdulwahed reconstructs the story of his father, who lived as a student in the GDR in the 1950s, drawing parallels to his own migration to Germany, through which he escaped the civil war in Syria. Temporal and geographical distance blur as Abdulwahed artfully merges images of his father with present-day footage. Accompanied by the voices of the protagonists, the film explores concepts of identity and memory within two lives from then and now, between Syria and (East) Germany. The film premiered at the IDFA Festival and was awarded the Grand Prix of the International Competition of the FID Marseille.