20th PriMed: The reactions of the jury

PriMed 2016 – Special dossier :

The PriMed 2016 winners – The reactions of the jury – 2,500 high school kids come to PriMed!
The public gives its award – Screenings and discussions – The Awards Ceremony

The five members of this year’s PriMed jury give us their impressions of a week spent in Marseille watching the 2016 selection.

Antoine Sfeir
Journalist and political scientist, director of Cahiers de l’Orient, jury chairman

“The week I spent at the PriMed in Marseille was a week of discoveries – cinematic and human. Throughout the screenings I was repeatedly surprised by films which were astonishing but also endearing. But the discovery which knocked me out was the CMCA team and its director: a young, dynamic team, with each member giving all his or her time and effort to satisfy the smallest demands of the public, the guest directors or the corporate sponsors. Most important for me were the deliberations of the jury with Shu Aiello, Lynda Bouadma, Daniel Deloit and Magdi Ghoneim. Very enriching, with everyone sharing his or her sensitivity and lucidity in a wonderful way. Throughout the week this jury which I had the honour to chair was very attentive, assiduous and harmonious: it was both refreshing and humbling to be with such true professionals. To everyone I say thank you.”

Shu Aiello
Film-director, production manager and executive producer

“The films chosen for this 20^th PriMed showed us pieces of the complex jigsaw that is the Mediterranean and of the disturbed times of violent contrasts which we are facing. The obscurantism of Isis or Golden Dawn, the violence of wars, the ferocity of finance set against the glimmers of light shining through the energy of Moroccan weavers, Spanish citizens, Neapolitan footballers remind us that there is still a beautiful, human quality in the south. The week that has just passed in talking, exchanging ideas, discovering, learning was a moment of grace which overwhelmed me.”

Lynda Bouadma
Journalist and Producer on Algerian Radio (Channel 3)

“What world are we living in? The selection of this year’s PriMed brings some answers. Suffering, torn lives, loss of dignity, provoked by wars, exile, unemployment and poverty. But beyond this observation and thanks to work which is both professional and full of sensitivity, commitment and finesse we are all challenged, from north to south. Our material or “intellectual” comforts are precarious. Nevertheless, the testimonies in each film challenge this fatalistic attitude, opening a way to hope, to the possible. Resistance, humour, commitment, perseverance, solidarity and faith in humanity are the keys to success and change. Being part of this jury has been for me a very beautiful intellectual and human adventure.”

Daniel Deloit
Managing director of ESJ Pro

“Once again, the organisers of the 20^th PriMed were right. Every selected documentary and news film uncompromisingly confronted reality, whether a here-and-now reality or something buried deep in our memories. However, all of them also project us into the future and this is not the least of their qualities. Of course, our reality is a patchwork of wars, migrations, genocides, persecutions, destructions and human failings, with their degrading, shameful and destructive consequences. These reported facts and these exhumed memories are tackled with lucidity, without excessive nostalgia or ill-placed modesty. But showing something is not just a professional posture, a bridge to knowledge or even a cry to awaken consciousness. It is basically an act of faith in humanity. It is daring to say that no dogma, whether religious, political or economic, can ever totally exhaust the source of liberating hope. It shows us revolts, struggles – and solidarity. That every day there are heroic and magnificent gestures, mutual gratitude, positive things – enhanced here by Love, there by Art or Tradition. It is to affirm that there is not an implacable Fatum dragging the region down but that, on the contrary, the Mediterranean is still that Athanor, that alchemist’s furnace where the pure alloy of fraternal otherness and freedom can mix.”

Magdi Ghoneim
Former regional head of TV5 Monde Maghreb Orient

“Total immersion in a region I know so well, a few days spent living, breathing, sharing the Mediterranean. I knew it was suffering – battered by history, fate, its past and everyday life. I rediscovered its tragic moments – they are named war, genocide, terrorism, dictatorship – but also the great hope which can suddenly appear, wipe away the tears, the anguish, the cries and weeping which the past has dug in wide furrows. Having had the pleasure of viewing the selected films I realized that in places a future is being constructed, that men and women bikers, weavers, footballers, nomads, musicians, journalists are dreaming of a different, more tolerant world, pacified, united. Of these few days spent watching films from and about the Mediterranean, there remains first of all the enormous pleasure of being in some way part of the CMCA’s PriMed, a festival I knew, I appreciated, I supported – but I had no idea of its impact on the cultural life of this beautiful city of Marseille. Nor of this wonderful project getting young people involved, showing them films, organising debates, to explain the issues at stake. I had an enormous satisfaction being part of a jury which was very heavily committed, which in my view was of a high human and professional quality with as chairman a great specialist of this region, Antoine Sfeir. And although sometimes, often, I weep for Aleppo, I also imagine the future may be more serene, less cruel. It is that immense hope I take from these images which were fighting for their place on the screens of the CMCA.”