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Taste of Cement
+Post-Film Discussion
+Minnesota Premiere
+Syria
Saturday, 9/29
5:00 p.m.
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Join us after the film for a discussion on Syria/Palestine Activism & Solidarity with Lina Jamoul.
ONE DAY IN ALEPPO
Ali Alibrahim
documentary short
24 min / 2017
Syria
Arabic with English subtitles
Minnesota premiere
After five months of the suffocating siege and daily bombings in Aleppo, a group of children begin painting colors in their city’s streets to forget their daily struggles. This silent short film documents such scenes, expressing the pain and hope of thousands from inside the besieged city.
Festivals and Awards:
Jury Special Mention, Visions du Reel, Switzerland, 2017
Best International Short Documentary, Shorts Mexico, 2017
Best Documentary Short, London Independent Film Awards, UK, 2017
Ali Alibrahim is a Syrian journalist with a degree in media and communications from Damascus University. He has worked as a correspondent for Syrian and pan-Arab newspapers and has produced many investigative reports and short films. Alibrahim is the managing editor of Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ), where he presents workshops on investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking for Syrian journalists.
TASTE OF CEMENT
Ziad Kalthoum
documentary
85 mins / 2017
Lebanon / Germany / Syria / Qatar / UAE
Arabic with English subtitles
Minnesota premiere
This film offers a portrait of workers from Syria living in exile and presents an honest encounter with people who have lost their past and their future, refugees of war locked in a recurring present. Syrian construction workers build new skyscrapers in Beirut on the ruins of buildings destroyed by the Lebanese civil war, while their own homes are bombed and destroyed in neighboring Syria. A local curfew prohibits the workers from leaving the construction site after work, and every night they listen to news about the war in Syria below the scaffolding. This impressionistic and carefully edited documentary tells the story of refugees imprisoned by the modern world’s cement structures and endless wars, as each day’s repetition brings more work, more welding, and the same nightmare.
Festivals and Awards:
Winner of the Grand Prix, Visions du Reel, Switzerland, 2017
Best Documentary Feature, Camden International Film Festival, US, 2017
Best Documentary Feature, Adelaide Film Festival, Australia, 2017
Ziad Kalthoum was born in Homs in 1981. He was assistant director on Mohammad Malas’s Ladder to Damascus (2013). His first short documentary was Oh, My Heart (2011), and his first feature documentary, The Immortal Sergeant (2013), examines the collision between daily life, his mandatory Syrian military service, and his role as a filmmaker. Taste of Cement is his second documentary feature.
