1. FAMILY ALBUMS in competition at International Mediterranean Film Festival Tétouan
2. LEAVING BAGHDAD at Cinema of Peace? Festival of the Tunisian Cine-Club Federation
3. GATE #5 for streaming and VOD in selected territories
4. Screen Institute Beirut Distribution Award for Best Arab Documentary in the official selection of Cinema Day of Beirut
5. SECTOR ZERO awarded with Academy of Art’s “Art-Prize Berlin 2013”
6. DVD of the month: Sector Zero
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1. FAMILY ALBUMS in competition at International Mediterranean Film Festival Tétouan

The collective documentary FAMILY ALBUM, initiated by Palestinian director Raed Andoni, is selected to the official competition of prestigious Moroccan Mediterranean Film Festival in Tétouan. The film will be represented by director Erige Sehiri.

Content
The Arab World is a region in unrest. Today’s young generation of artists was born into conflicts who’s beginning they do not know and which seem not to end. They carry their parents’ exiles, traumas and lost hopes in them. In Family Albums four filmmakers draw up a sensitive portrait of that region.
In Kabylia, Nassim Amaouche digs with his father in the rubble of the family home bombed in 1957 searching for his father’s lost childhood or a new start between both men.
Erige Sehiri too, must rediscover her father. It seems that the Tunisian revolution and his new addiction to Facebook drove him away. He even left his family and went back to his small Tunisian village.
In the case of Ahmad, Sameh Zoabi’s childhood friend, Facebook doesn’t measure up. This handsome 35 years old guy is still single, a quite problematic situation in this little Palestinian village of northern Israel. As his mother gave up finding him a wife, Sameh decides to take it over.
Mais Darwazeh also lives alone. In Amman, a city of uprooted people, she builds her own identity by gathering around her table close friends, chosen ingredients, and old recipies.

Nassim Amaouche, Mais Darwazah, Erige Sehiri, Sameh Zoabi, France/Palestine/UAE 2012, 82 min, digital, Arabic/Berber/French/English with English, French or Arabic subtitles

The short films of this omnibus film can also be booked individually. See the synopsises here
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2. LEAVING BAGHDAD at Cinema of Peace? Festival of the Tunisian Cine-Club Federation

Koutaiba al-Janabi’s sensitive feature about a fictitious cameraman of Saddam Hussein, still tours international film festivals. This month it will be shown at the Cinema of Peace? Festival in Tunis.

Content
Baghdad in the early 2000s: Sadik, a personal cameraman to Saddam Hussein escapes Iraq. Hoping to join his estranged wife in London, he traverses several countries, is passed on from one smuggler to the next. The disappearance of his son, who did not share his father’s enthusiasm for the regime, and scenes Sadik had filmed for work, haunt him alike whilst he tries to find his way out of the omnipresent and tormenting shadows of the regime.
As footage shot by fictional Sadik, Koutaiba Al-Janabi weaves real footage from Saddam Hussein’s now accessible archive into his documentary style, slow paced fiction.
more
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3. GATE #5 for streaming and VOD in selected territories

Simon El Habre’s GATE #5 is now available as stream or VOD in selected territories with our partner realeyz.tv

Content
They were young, loved adventures and had choices. In the 1960s and 70s thousands of young Lebanese left their villages and searched for a new life in the city – as countless like-minded people around the globe. The port of Beirut, the city’s economic lung and central urban district, provided work for truck drivers - a job that stressed masculinity and became a lifestyle. The income allowed the young men to participate in the vibrant urban life, to enjoy their time at the always busy Burj Square with its many cinemas and restaurants as well as to start families.
During the years of the civil war (1975-90) the drivers were needed to maintain the supply of food, goods, and sometime weapons between the divided sectors of country. Some were humble, others were heroic, yet all were adventuresomeness and felt free.
After the war ended the once popular Burj Square, the city’s centre, was demolished, privatized and rebuild for the affluent. Lebanese economy was reorganized, thus globalized. Today fancy restaurants in the new downtown charge in Dollar and sometimes in Euro.
The truck drivers’ universe shrunk to the port where they offer their skills as day laborers now. Yet mostly they kill time and take long journeys in memory. One of them, Najm El Habre, is too sick to join his friends. He found a different way to carry on.
Simon El Habre, Lebanon/UAE 2011, 84 min, color, HDCAM, Arabic with English subtitles
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4. Screen Institute Beirut Distribution Award for Best Arab Documentary in the official selection of Cinema Day of Beirut

In harmony with its essential role in supporting documentary film production in the Arab World, and in an initiative that reflects both institutions’ common interest in documentary films and filmmakers and the forms of their support and promotion, Screen Institute Beirut (SIB) is offering its support for the 7th edition of Ayam Beirut Al Cinema’iya.
Screen Institute Beirut will offer a prize of $ 5000 to support the theatrical distribution of an Arab documentary from the festival’s official selection in its Arab Mother Country. The prize will be awarded either to the producer or distributor (If available), upon the presentation of a concrete and convincing distribution plan.
The jury members are:
- Irit Neidhardt – German Producer/ Distributor (mec film)
- Nadine Labaki – Acclaimed Lebanese Director and Actress
- Paul Baboudjian - From Screen Institute Beirut
more
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5. SECTOR ZERO awarded with Academy of Art’s “Art-Prize Berlin 2013”

Nadim Mishlawi will be awarded with the Art-Prise Berlin 2013 for his feature length documentary SECTOR ZERO on March 17th in the Academy of Berlin. The screening of the film will be followed by a conversation of Nadim Mishlawi and German director Ulrike Ottinger.
The DVD is available at mecfilm-shop.com
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6. DVD of the month: Sector Zero

If film is the art of showing, the highest art may be not to how it all. Sector Zero is such an example. Volker Schlöndorff

Content
On the outskirts of Beirut lies the notorious, now derelict, area of Karantina. Sector Zero examines the area’s tumultuous history, using it as a metaphor for Lebanon’s own troubled past. Tracing the area’s history through its landmark buildings – the Ottoman-built Quarantine Facility, the slaughterhouse, the tannery and the nightclub – this once vacant plot of land evolved into a multinational ghetto of refugees, including Palestinians, and was the sight of a massacre in 1976 during the civil war. Relying on the insights of a psychologist, a writer and an architect, Sector Zero analyses the traumas of this urban void in modern-day Lebanon, and how its dark history mirrors Lebanon’s erratic progression as a country in search of its national identity.

Nadim Mishlawi, Lebanon 2011, 68 min, Arabic and English
Subtitles: Arabic, English, French
Bonus: Echoes in a Room with no Walls (Short Film), Interview with the director, still images
PAL, region free

Subjects
Memory, Karantina, Lebanon, Civil War, Architecture, Psychology

Award
Dubai International Film Festival, Arab Documentary Muhr Award: First Prize

Institutional rights: according to the rights you whish to acquire and your territory the fee varies, please place your order at info@~@mecfilm.de
Price: 18,-€
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