Director: Stephan Streker
Scriptwriter: Stephan Streker
Cinematographer: Grimm Vandekerckhove
Editing: Jérôme Guiot, Mathilde Muyard
Sound: Olivier Ronval
Artistic Director: Catherine Cosme
Cast: Lina El Arabi, Sébastien Houbani, Babak Karimi, Neena Kulkarni, Olivier Gourmet, Alice de Lencquesaing
Production:
Daylight Films
Formosa Productions
Tarantual Luxembourg
Minds Meet
Bodhicitta Works
Backup Films
Distribution:
Jour2Fete
9 rue Ambroise Thomas
75 009 Paris
France
Tel: 0033 1 40 22 92 15
Mail: [email protected]
www.jour2fete.com
Year: 2016
DCP, Colour, 98 min, OV Urdu with French Subtitles
Best Actor and Actress at French Film Festival in Angoulême
Zahira is an eighteen-year-old Belgian-Pakistani young woman living in apparently quite integrated open family. She feels very close to her family until she tells them about her pregnancy and is imposed a traditional wedding. The young woman is torn between her parents’ demands and her western way of life aspiring for freedom; she counts on her elder brother Amir, who is also her confidant, to help her.
“Just as in a Greek tragedy, what is dreadful is the situation, not the characters. I was mainly interested in the intimacy of each and every character of this tragedy, all having very powerful moral issues. The family is united by ties of true love. Yet, everyone is torn apart. To start with, Zahira is obviously torn between her aspiration for a legitimate freedom and her love for her family, who also happens to be her jailer. I set out to understand all the characters: of course Zahira, but also her brother, father, mother, elder sister, etc. “ Stephan Streker
