To You, Wherever You Are

The second Gulf War from 1990 to 1991 represents in the collective Arab memory a turning point in regards to the Arab nationalism’s self-perception as well as a moment of deep historical and existential insecurity. Five Arab directors discuss the events from their personal perspective.

This is Egypt and one of its symbols, Sad Al-Ali, the massive wonder that is the high dam of Aswan. With a first-person narrative in a soft, husky voice, the film explores the memory of the Nile Valley to tell the story of Lake Nasser and the ecological and human consequences of this construction. Floods caused by the Ethiopian rains spread the silt and evacuated the algae. The order of nature was disrupted, the salt rose and cracked the earth, the crops burned. Sea water reached the water tables. The Nubians fled the valley engulfed by the waters, leaving behind their villages and their culture. Twenty-five years after the construction of the dam, there is no longer any coherence between the lower valley and the Nile. The city of Cairo has expanded, a heterogeneous development where human pollution overflows. The film is a bitter reflection on a lost human philosophy, a dialogue constantly renewed with the land and its river.

Zeina is a Catholic student whose good friend Haidar, a Muslim, has always been particularly close. After a futile attempt to get together (he gets caught in traffic), they each decide to make an audio tape trying to explain, based on their own ideas, why there continues to be fighting in Lebanon now, in 1977, and why they are against it. Zeina is about to leave for the United States and Haidar is to meet her at the airport, where they will exchange their tapes. Alas, fate intervenes because when he arrives early at the airport, he is harassed by someone looking to prey on gullible refugees and he gets so angry that he grabs a taxi out of there, throwing his tape away as he does so. When Zeina arrives and realizes he is not there, she is broken-hearted.

On the eve of the Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, Israel declares martial law in all the occupied Arab territories without any previous notice. When the villagers of Kafr Kassem returned home from the fields, they were butchered and killed in what is known today as the massacre of “Kafr Kassem”.

The Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy talks about his life and work. Footage of Cairo, Gharb Assouan, New Gourna, Kom-Ombo.

Alaouié presents the stories of four exiles from Beirut. Their only connection is the voice of the narrator and their situation of living in exile in Europe. Told with a subtle humor, the film sketches four highly individual portraits of people, whose lives have taken unexpected turns due to the madness of the Civil War.

The class struggle between loving the poor, or asking yourself an excuse to be selfish for trying to live a luxury life.

Adar, an old actor who loves both theater and cinema. Its character portrays a play about a shoemaker whose dream is to create a political party, the Nail Party, in order to represent the common people in the presidential election in Algeria. It is a story of absence, memories of absence.