We often get stuck in a rhythm, a pattern of movement that keep us in one place, tending to one situation, sometimes far longer than we intend. Whether (im)mobilized by convention or war or occupation, creatures desire movement and change: a push beyond the status quo, a changing of the guard, a revolutionary burst of energy to incite something different and new. In this series of short films, each film uses sound an image to explore the place between life and death, memory and forgetting, war and peace, and stagnation and movement.
While investigating events that profoundly altered the landscape of the Western Sahara (most of which is occupied by Morocco), the filmmaker found himself faced with a silent environment: haunted by its complex socio-political history. As an alternative, he then decided to focus on the organic life that inhabits the desert as a way of reconstructing people’s amnesia about the situation in Western Sahara.
Festivals and Awards
Visions du Réel International Film Festival, France, 2021
New Cinema Award, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, UK, 2021
About the filmmaker
Abdessamad El Montassir was born in 1989, and he lives and works between Boujdour and Marseille. After graduating from the Institut National des Beaux-Arts in Tetouan, El Montassir completed his MA in Artistic and Esthetic Education at the École Normale Supérieure in Meknès. His research is centered on a trilogy: the right to forget, fictional and visceral narratives, and the trauma of anticipation. In his body of work and research, El Montassir sets reflexive processes that invite us to rethink history through collective or fictional narratives and immaterial archives (poetry). His projects also question traumas and their impacts on individuals, their behavior, and their socio-political evolution, and his work reveals processes where these traumas serve to historization. El Montassir tackles these problems while taking into consideration the knowledge on non-human identities in order to ignite the emergence of renewed manners to think about our environments.
- Year2020
- Runtime19 minutes
- LanguageArabic, English, French
- CountryWestern Sahara, Morocco
- DirectorAbdessamad El Montassir
- ScreenwriterAbdessamad El Montassir
- ProducerAbdessamad El Montassir
- CinematographerStephanos Mangriotis
- EditorFatima Bianchi
- Sound DesignMatthieu Guillin
We often get stuck in a rhythm, a pattern of movement that keep us in one place, tending to one situation, sometimes far longer than we intend. Whether (im)mobilized by convention or war or occupation, creatures desire movement and change: a push beyond the status quo, a changing of the guard, a revolutionary burst of energy to incite something different and new. In this series of short films, each film uses sound an image to explore the place between life and death, memory and forgetting, war and peace, and stagnation and movement.
While investigating events that profoundly altered the landscape of the Western Sahara (most of which is occupied by Morocco), the filmmaker found himself faced with a silent environment: haunted by its complex socio-political history. As an alternative, he then decided to focus on the organic life that inhabits the desert as a way of reconstructing people’s amnesia about the situation in Western Sahara.
Festivals and Awards
Visions du Réel International Film Festival, France, 2021
New Cinema Award, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, UK, 2021
About the filmmaker
Abdessamad El Montassir was born in 1989, and he lives and works between Boujdour and Marseille. After graduating from the Institut National des Beaux-Arts in Tetouan, El Montassir completed his MA in Artistic and Esthetic Education at the École Normale Supérieure in Meknès. His research is centered on a trilogy: the right to forget, fictional and visceral narratives, and the trauma of anticipation. In his body of work and research, El Montassir sets reflexive processes that invite us to rethink history through collective or fictional narratives and immaterial archives (poetry). His projects also question traumas and their impacts on individuals, their behavior, and their socio-political evolution, and his work reveals processes where these traumas serve to historization. El Montassir tackles these problems while taking into consideration the knowledge on non-human identities in order to ignite the emergence of renewed manners to think about our environments.
- Year2020
- Runtime19 minutes
- LanguageArabic, English, French
- CountryWestern Sahara, Morocco
- DirectorAbdessamad El Montassir
- ScreenwriterAbdessamad El Montassir
- ProducerAbdessamad El Montassir
- CinematographerStephanos Mangriotis
- EditorFatima Bianchi
- Sound DesignMatthieu Guillin