Mapping Lessons is a travel film both in content and aesthetics. We journey with K to a Levant being colonized, and then travel through time and place to anti-neocolonial struggles there, set in conversation with others across the globe - from 1936 Spain, to the early experiment of the Soviets, resistance in Vietnam and Algeria to uprisings in Argentina and the Paris Commune.

The film features lessons K learns from her encounters along the way, on agro-ecology and self-governance, on sustainable energy, and about education outside of the framework of the nation-state. The journey frames the current neo-colonial reality that plagues the region within the colonization of the past. Inspired by the internet tutorial format, Mapping Lessons tells of experiments in autonomy in the absence of a state, showing experiments that act as a manual for the next time.

The film’s musical score features a 1972 recording session that took place in Cairo, Egypt. Much like the lessons, the film’s soundtrack is improvised.