Grandma, a Thousand Times
Feature Docs
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A film by Mahmoud Kaabour
Produced by Veritas Films
UAE, Qatar, Lebanon co-production
(48' 2010)
"Delightful, warm-hearted, and defiantly unsentimental" - THE NEW YORK TIMES
"A genial, often hilarious crowd-pleaser" - VARIETY
"Magical" - THE HUFFINGTON POST
Awards:
Audience Award - Doha Tribeca Film Festival (100,000$ presented by Robert de Niro)
Best Film - London International Documentary Festival
Best Film - Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI)
Audience Award - DOX BOX
Merit Prize- Taiwan International Documentary Festival
Jury Special Mention for Best Filmmaker - Doha Tribeca Film Festival
Jury Special Mention - DocsDF
Additional festivals (abridged): Tribeca, Rotterdam, Seattle International, & Krakow.
Synopsis:
Teta Fatima is the 83-year old matriarch of the Kaabour family and the sharp-witted queen bee of an old Beiruti quarter. With great intimacy, the film documents her larger-than-life character as she struggles to cope with the silence of her once-buzzing house and imagines what awaits her beyond death. Meanwhile, her beloved violinist husband (deceased 20 years) is both an essential absence and presence. His features manifest through the face of their filmmaker grandson while his previously unpublished violin improvisations weave through her world and that of the film.
Teta, Alf Marra brings together grandfather, grandmother, and grandson in a playful magic-realist documentary that aims to defy a past death and a future one.