83 minutes | Egypt, Turkey | 2024
Raised in an environment where socialism and the pursuit of justice in Egypt were central, the filmmaker navigates through mixed emotions—pride, burden, and alienation—stemming from his and his parents' intense activist lives. His journey to trace back his family's history highlights the substantial emotional and psychological toll this activism took the thee of them.
Director: Bassam Mortada
Bassam Mortada is a director, producer and activist. He is also a co-founder of See media production. He studied Independent filmmaking at the Jesuite Cairo Cinema School. As an independent filmmaker, Mortada worked with a number of independent institutions, NGOs, activists, to help document their life, struggle and work. In 2008, Mortada joined Al-Masry Media Corporation as a creative producer and director where he helped set up the first independent Web-documentary TV in Egypt. He trained many journalists and managed to create a team of young video journalists, who broke grounds in the area of video journalism and produced many stories that went viral. His first feature documentary ‘Reporting...a Revolution’ in 2012 was about these journalists. It premiered in the Berlinale film festival in Berlin 2012 and toured many festivals worldwide. Mortada then moved to start his own independent production See Media Production with producers Kesmat EL Sayed to focus on developing his creative feature documentary “Abo Zabaal prison 1989” and support others. Since then he has also directed three short documentaries, one of which “Waiting for his Descent” won the first prize for documentary at the Jesuite film festival. “Searching for Ghazala” which premiered at the Cairo International film festival.