The Grand Prix “Mediterranean Challenges” is given to the best film (documentary or reportage) on a current Mediterranean subject, lasting more than 30 minutes. It picks out productions which improve our understanding of the present situation in the Mediterranean and rewards a director’s skill at questioning events and putting them into perspective, as well as his capacity to listen to the principal characters. Here are the films chosen to take part in the 22nd PriMed, le Festival de la Méditerranée en images, from November 25th to December 1st 2018 in Marseille:
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ASHBAL, LES LIONCEAUX DU CALIFAT (Ashbal, the lion cubs of the Caliphat)
By Thomas DANDOIS and François-Xavier TRÉGAN
52 minutes, 2017
Production: Arte,Memento
They are aged between 4 and 16 ans. In the Islamic State they are known as ashbal, the Caliphate’s lion cubs. These children have spent months in training camps being badly treated and brain-washed, then sent to the front line. After many months gradually getting to know them, the directors were able to gain the confidence of these damaged kids and their families. They agreed to open up. “Ashbal, les lionceaux du califat” is their story.
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LIBYE, ANATOMIE D’UN CRIME (Libya, Anatomy of a Crime)
By Cécile ALLEGRA
69 minutes, 2018
Production: Cinétévé, Arte
Yassine, Nazir and Ahmed have escaped from Libya, the land of their birth. Like ghosts they wander in Tunis, bearing within them a heavy secret. They come across a handful of investigators, Libyan resistance fighters also exiled in Tunisia, and tell their confused, painful story. Two of the investigators, Emad et Ramadan, obstinate but caring, follow-up the scraps of information given by these three damaged men. When their eye-witness statements are put together, they reveal the outlines of an unprecedented crime: since the Revolution the systematic rape of Libyan men on a massive scale. An unspeakable crime which history is trying to suppress.
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MARSEILLE, ILS ONT TUÉ MON FILS (Marseilles, They’ve Killed My Son)
By Edouard BERGEON and Philippe PUJOL
55 minutes, 2018
Production: Cocottesminute productions, with the participation of Public Sénat et France Télévisions
Souad, Baya and Cécile: three mothers in Marseilles. They watched their sons grow up in the city’s northern neighbourhoods, and then watched them lose themselves there. Sometimes die. These mothers tell us in fragments how they survive, stuck in tower-blocks which they cannot leave and where they are slowly consumed by their own grief. Through memories of the past, the daily chaos of their lives and their efforts to find a future, the film tells the story of these women who have lost their child.
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STRANGE FISH
By Giulia BERTOLUZZI
53 minutes, 2018
Production: Small Boss
“Strange Fish” echoes Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit” in which, to general indifference, violence against coloured people is taken as normal, with « black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees». In the southern Mediterranean the feeling is the same. The fishermen in Zarzis, a Tunisian town on the borders of Libya, set out each day wondering whether they will find a strange fish in their nets, the bloated corpse of a drowned emigrant. But Bertoluzzi’s documentary does not only show this drama, with its all-pervading indifference. It rather shows the deep and human response of the town’s anonymous heroes. For 15 years, these fishermen have helped and saved thousands of people. “And if we find them already dead, we help them as well – we bury them”, says Chamseddine Marzoug.
SPECIAL PriMed 2018 SELECTION FILE
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“Mediterranean Memory” category
“Mediterranean Art, Heritage and Cultures” category
“First Documentary Film” category
“Mediterranean Short Doc” category
Mediterranean Young People’s Award
