Yalla, Baba!
Spring Grants 2019 - Development Stage
Angie Obeid / Feature Documentary / Belgium, Lebanon, Qatar / 90 min / Original Language: Arabic, English, French / Interests: Politics, Road Trip, Social Issues, War, Immigration, Creative Documentary
Synopsis
In 1980, 32-year-old Mansour travelled to Belgium with his friends, bought cars, and set off on a long road trip fuelled by a love of adventure and discovery back to Lebanon, a country already tired from five years of an eventual 15-year civil war. Today, after 40 years, Mansour (70) is a retired geo-historian that still lives in Beirut and has not travelled ever since. It was only after his daughter Angie (30) left for Belgium to study that potent memories of this most adventurous time of his life have suddenly reawakened. Angie invites her father to Brussels to look for a new car and go on the same journey. The path, previously taken by Mansour, is no longer the same. On the 4,000 kilometres once crossed, countries have disappeared, and others were born. Some borders have faded, while others have emerged. Dictatorships have risen and fallen. Wars were extinguished, and others broke out, causing deaths, destruction and immense displacement along those same roads he once drove across. And Lebanon, caught between the sea and two conflicts, is no longer accessible by land. The journey of rediscovering the distance between Europe and Lebanon becomes an intimate discovery of the new father/daughter relationship beyond the borders of the traditional family context they are usually framed in.
Credits
- Director
- Angie Obeid
- Screenwriter
- Angie Obeid
- Producer
- Bart Van Langendonck
About the Director
Born in Beirut in 1988, Angie Obeid obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Film Directing and Scriptwriting from Notre Dame University—Lebanon (2010) and a Master’s degree in Documentary Filmmaking, DOC NOMADS—Portugal, Hungary and Belgium (2018). She has been working, since 2009, as a producer, director, assistant director and editor on numerous documentaries for Al-Jazeera Documentary Channel, in addition to several independent documentaries. Her first feature documentary ‘I Used to Sleep on the Rooftop’ (2017) won the special mention award at FIDMarseille 2017 and has been screened at several festivals in Europe. Her short documentary ‘Pacific’ (2019) was selected for Visions du Réel and Hot Docs 2019. Angie is currently preparing for her second feature-length documentary ‘Yalla, Baba!’.