Apatride (Stateless) - UK Premiere Film
Narjiss Nejjar | Morocco/France/Qatar 2018 | 1h34m | Moroccan Arabic with English subtitles | 12
Synopsis
Apatride (Stateless) is the fourth feature film by critically acclaimed Moroccan director Narjiss Nejjar. It tells the story of Hénia, a beautiful young woman living in a small village on the Moroccan side of the Algerian-Moroccan border. With her father she has been exiled from Algeria and separated from her mother for more than thirty years as a result of the Black March - the sudden expulsion in 1975 of 45,000 Moroccan families from Algeria to Morocco in response to Morocco’s annexation of the Spanish-occupied Western Sahara. Trapped in a domineering and loveless marriage with a significantly older Moroccan husband, Hénia struggles to reconcile her sense of belonging and longs to return to Algeria.
The fraught and often contradictory nature of existence in such a border space is powerfully evoked through the performances of the lead actors and by the cinematography of French DOP Stéphane Vallée, who shoots Hénia in close-up and short focus as a motif for her dislocation from the society around her. The film offers an original take on themes such as displacement and the condition of women that already have a strong presence in contemporary Maghrebi cinema. Apatride received its premiere in February 2018 at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Producer Lamia Chraibi will be in attendance for a Q&A after the screening.
Plus short
Al Hadaf (Target) | Munir Abbar | Morocco 2012 | 18 min | Moroccan Arabic with English subtitles
Tarik, a young man recently arrived in Tangier from the south of Morocco, lives alone, with a canary and Said, his young neighbour as his only friends. Tarik is a proud Moroccan, he is Muslim but not extremist, and he is intelligent and creative. He dreams of a better life and decides to take a chance: he needs to find an opportunity to travel to the European Eldorado he can see on the horizon. He observes the hustle and bustle of the harbour intensely, especially the security officers, and comes up with a plan…
This screening is kindly sponsored by the University of Exeter and the AHRC.
