Bandido + Abo Zaabal 89

Bandido
بانديدو
Mohamad El-Hadidi, Egypt, Germany 2024, 23 min. Arabic, English with English subtitles

Abo Zaabal 89
أبو زعبل ٨٩
Bassam Mortada, Egypt, Germany 2024, 83 min. Arabic with English subtitles

Followed by a talk with Bassam Mortada and Mohamad El-Hadidi

Bandido* follows photojournalist Alaa, who, after fleeing from Cairo to Berlin to escape police prosecution, meets Lia at a party. A mutual attraction ignites, except Alaa doesn’t know who Lia really is.

Abo Zaabal 89 director, the filmmaker and activist Bassam Mortada, once said, “I always felt he betrayed us by leaving me, my mother, and the struggle.” In search of understanding and healing, Mortada delves into the legacy of his father’s imprisonment and torture in Abo Zaabal prison in 1989, reconstructing the traumatic events that divided his family and finally led to his father departuring to Vienna. While rooted in Egypt’s turbulent political history, the film remains a deeply personal exploration of a child trying to understand how his family was torn apart. Mortada uncovers how his parents’ political activism shaped their lives as he films his efforts to renew and restore relationships with them. Through intimate conversations, archival footage, theatrical monologues and his father’s cassette tapes from exile, Abo Zaabal 89 shows the impact of the “big” history of Egypt on the “small” history of his family. (AF)

The film premiered in the International Critics’ Week Competition of the 45th Cairo Film Festival and was part of IDFA’s Luminous Section 2024.

*In cooperation with AFAC (Arab Fund for Arts and Culture).

Bassam Mortada is a director, producer, activist and co-founder of See Media Production. He studied Independent Filmmaking at the Jesuit Cairo Cinema School and worked with NGOs and activists. His debut feature Reporting... a Revolution premiered at Berlinale 2012. (AF)

Mohamad El-Hadidi is a Berlin-based filmmaker and co-founder of Rufy’s Films. Hadidi’s works have been screened at various prestigious festivals across the world and currently, he is writing the script of his first feature fiction film.