Selection for PriMed 2016 : First Film category

The following is the selection for PriMed 2016 in the First Film category :

– LES DERNIERS NOMADES by Hamdi BEN AHMED

– LORO DI NAPOLI by Pierfrancesco LI DONNI

– MURAT, LE GÉOGRAPHE by Samuele PELLECCHIA

– WHEELS OF WAR by Rami KODEIH

PriMed is the International Festival of Mediterranean Documentary and Reportage. Its 20th edition will take place from November 20th to 26th in Marseille.
www.primed.tv

LES DERNIERS NOMADES
54 minutes, 2016
Director : Hamdi BEN AHMED (Tunisia)
Production : No Pasaran Production (Tunisia)

Cut off from the world, in the extreme south of Tunisia, with neither papers nor birth certificates, the Rebayaa tribe maintains the nomadic lifestyle of its ancestors. “Les Derniers Nomades” brings us into their daily life, showing us their traditions, songs and music. But slowly people within the community are starting to wonder which road they should take to the “civilized” world.

Hamdi BEN AHMED
Hamdi BEN AHMED, a young Tunisian director, made his first short film “Métamorphose” in 2006. In 2011, with grants from the Tunisian Ministry of Culture, he made a documentary “Préhistoire de la Tunisie”, a film selected at several festivals such as the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage,  FESPACO and FOFA where in 2012 he won the Best Arab Documentary Award. “Les Derniers Nomades” is his first feature-length film.

LORO DI NAPOLI
69 minutes, 2015
Director : Pierfrancesco LI DONNI (Italy)
Production : Own Air (Italy), Minollo Film (Italy)

In Naples the football team Afro Napoli United have moved up into the national league, a dream for its players – mostly immigrants from the Ivory Coast, Cape Verde, Senegal and Brazil. But none of them has a residence permit. Maxim came from a country at war. Adam, who dropped out of school, is goalkeeper and bartender. Lello, stateless, left a son behind. They struggle through the morass of Italian immigration laws, helped by their coach, Antonio.

Pierfrancesco LI DONNI
Pierfrancesco LI DONNI was born in Palermo in 1984.
He studied contemporary history and visual arts at the University of Bologna.
As a director he has three documentaries to his credit: “Loro di Napoli” (2015), “Sempre vivi” (2013) and “Il secondo tempo” (2012).

MURAT, LE GÉOGRAPHE
70 minutes, 2015
Director : Samuele PELLECCHIA (Italy)
Production : Prospekt Photographers (Italy), Università di Cagliari (Italy)

What is a city and how does it evolve? An Italian geographer arrives in Marseille to  research one of Europe’s largest urban regeneration projects of recent decades: the Euro-Mediterranean project.
He stays in the Belle de Mai, a working class district close to the project. Simply living in this area, the ordinary practices and everyday life he witnesses turn his certainties upside down.
Looking at Marseille from this little world, conceptual categories and interpretive models prove both ineffective and useless. Because urban space is ultimately the result of the complex relationship between desires, dreams, debates, practices and limitations – it also depends on each individual observer.
MURAT – Multiplicity Urban Representational Amazing Theory is the collective name for everyone who has participated in this film-cum-research.

Samuele PELLECCHIA
Samuele PELLECCHIA was born in 1972.
He is the creator of the photographic agency Prospekt and works as a photographer. His work has been published in different magazines such as Newsweek, GQ, Vanity Fair, Private, New York Times, International Herald Tribune and Russian Reporter. He has worked on photographic projects and publications sponsored by international institutions, NGO’s and foundations.
Since 2010 he has also made videos as director and producer.
His first webdoc “The iron curtain diaries” was selected at Amsterdam’s Idfa, at the Prix France 24-RFI for web-documentaries, at Visa pour l’Image 2009 and at the Festival des 4 Écrans in Paris.
In 2011, his project “Close To Me” was selected for the Nuit de l’Année at the Rencontres d’Arles. As a producer he won first prize at the 2012 Rome International Film Festival, the Prospettive per l’Italia, for Luca Ferrari’s “Pezzi”.

WHEELS OF WAR
57 minutes, 2015
Director : Rami KODEIH (Lebanon)
Production : Al Jazeera Documentary Channel (Qatar)

From 1975 to 1990, the Lebanon was involved in a devastating civil war which cost the lives of about 200,000 people. A whole generation of young people fought in the name of different faiths.
In the wake of the war, many of these young militiamen have found peace in an unlikely place. “Wheels of War” tells their story.

Rami KODEIH
Rami KODEIH was born in 1983.
He studied film directing at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts. His graduation film “A Sheherazade Tale” was selected for the 2008 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and he won the Best Arab Film Award at the 2007 Jordan Short Film Festival.
Since then he has written and directed his second short “The Mill” and more recently the documentary “Wheels of War”.
He makes documentaries for Al Jazeera and industrial films for several agencies.

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