Combined Programme: Unreachable Objects

Event has passed Rich Mix (Cinema),

At 16, Mourad Ben Amor wrote a letter to his cousin Fairuz Ghammam, expressing a wish to make films as she does. His first film, made in a dialogue with her between Mahdia, Tunisia, and Brussels, Belgium, presents filmmaking as an act of seeing and showing the world, a world shared with touching grace by stray dogs on dust roads, olive trees, white cats, and the news that spills through screens.

Elusive and illusory, Unreachable Object is a layered exploration of the performance of motherhood. Ostensibly breaking the fourth wall, director Fanfan Zhou takes us through the casting and rehearsal process for a personal scene whose veracity is obscured by the capricious nature of memory and grief. Unpicking the role of visual cultures in epistemology, the resulting work is both engrossing and unnerving.

Retracing the route through the Naqab desert taken by Chantal Akerman in her 2015 film No Home Movie, Eitan Efrat and Sirah Foighel Brutmann pivot their lens towards what Akerman’s withheld from. From that gesture stems a geopolitical portrait that recovers and reasserts images of a Palestinian Bedouin community from the colonial representation of the site as vacant and vague.

Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.

This event is included in the Rich Mix Venue Pass. Pass holders can book a free ticket to this event and all other screenings and events taking place at Rich Mix as part of the festival. More information on the pass can be found here.

Please see our Access page for more information regarding content warnings for this screening.

With support from the Delegation of Flanders to the UK and Ireland.