Digital Betacam, color, 104’, 2007
by Nadia Kamel

coproduction with Snooze Productions, Les Films d’Ici, RTSI-Televisione svizzera, Cityzen TV

original version: Arab, English, Italian, French, Hebrew (o.v.) subtitles : English

Premiere Locarno Film Festival 2007 - Ici & Ailleurs

21st century Egypt, spurred by the rallying cries of a global clash of civilizations, risks drowning in a xenophobic frenzy. MARY, a grandmother, and her daughter (the filmmaker) join efforts to give  Mary's grandson, Nabeel,  a glimpse into possible alternatives: the family's 100-year history of mixed marriages.

Like many Egyptians, after a century sprinkled with multiple immigrations, a few conversions and a few mixed marriages, Nabeel is a mix of Egyptian, Italian, Palestinian and Lebanese with some Russian, Caucasian, Turk and Spanish; from his  Moslem, Christian and Jewish descendants he inherits a track record embracing socialism, fascism, communism, nationalism, feminism and pacifism.

But as the grandmother weaves her way through the family fairy tales, she bumps into her own fears and the continued silence shrouding one branch of the family grows distressingly louder.
In an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people dispossessed by the creation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948, Mary has been boycotting her Egyptian Jewish family in Israel for 55 long years.