Producers Kesmat Elsayed
Bassam Mortada was raised by political activists and his family rupture became inevitable when his father was confined to Egypt’s notorious Abo Zaabal prison in 1989. Drawing remarkable parallels between a country’s turbulent trajectory and a family’s moving emotional spiral, Mortada delicately and exhaustively explores memory and legacy while holding both his parents and their perspectives with unflinching love and understanding. He digs through family records, cassette tapes, found footage, and newspaper clippings as well as utilizes performance to collate this multitextural vision. Beyond the trauma that comes from political persecution, healing and transformation are at the center of this heart-stirring and thought-provoking documentary, exposing the private ways in which family foundations are shaken by political retaliation. (AT) This film contains discussion of torture.
