ON A FOREIGN LAND

programmed by: Roy Dib

Foreigner (Xenos), Directed by: Mahdi Fleifel, 2013, 13’ Arabic; English and Turkish subtitles

Liberdade, Directed by: Gabriel Abrantes ve Benjamin Crotty, 2011, 16’ English, Mandarin, Portuguese; English and Turkish subtitles

Sporting Club, Director: Zalfa Seurat, 2014, 27’ French, Arabic; English and Turkish subtitles

Mahdi Fleifel’s Xenos portrays Abu Eyad’s fleeing to Greece from Ain el- Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. In Gabriel Abrantes and Benjamin Crotty’s Liberdade, Liberdade and his Chinese girlfriend, Betty, are trying to survive their relationship in Angola. In Sporting Club, Zalfa Seurat shows Alex waiting for her guests to appear at her sixtieth birthday by a beach in Beirut.

These three short films delineate stories of people who find themselves in a foreign territory. Territory not solely defined by the physical borders that fabricate a country, but a situation created by a particular interaction of spatial and temporal variables. Each in their own unrelatable territories constantly flee, but to where?

MAHDI FLEIFEL

Foreigner (Xenos)

In 2010, Abu Eyad and other young Palestinian men from the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon travelled with smugglers through Syria and Turkey into Greece. Like so many other migrants, they came looking for a way into Europe but found themselves trapped in a country undergoing economic, political, and social collapse.

Xenos is a short documentary, blending footage shot on visits to Athens in 2011 with phone conversations recorded during Abu Eyad’s time there. It tells of his day-to-day struggle for survival and enduring sense of exile in a land of hope that has become a nightmare.

GABRIEL ABRANTES & BENJAMIN CROTTY

Liberdade Liberdade

Shot in Luanda, Angola, this visually ravishing tale of romance, crime, and erectile dysfunction chronicles the relationship between an Angolan boy and a Chinese girl as they attempt to forge a shared transcultural identity.