What does it mean to be forced to leave your home, your neighbourhood, and the country where you grew up? While many factors can push people to leave, displacement remains a painful experience—one narrated by the young Egyptian director Mahmoud Ibrahim and the other by the French director Antoine Chapon, in films being screened as part of the “Forum Expanded” program at the Berlinale.
Displacement is among the most pressing topics in the contemporary world, a reality reflected in the selection of two short Arab films to be screened together as part of the Berlinale’s “Forum Expanded” programme. Despite their many differences in many elements, the two works share a central theme: forced migration.The Last Day / Akher Youm
Without any budget, and in a single day of filming in his hometown of Kafr El-Dawar, the young Egyptian director Mahmoud Ibrahim managed to make a moving film which, in its narrative simplicity and running time of just five minutes, embodies the value of narrative eloquence and the ability to express deep meanings with the simplest tools.Two brothers are forced, for reasons that are not stated but can be deduced, to evacuate their home before it is demolished. As they gather their belongings and prepare to leave, they show the natural emotions of people being forced to gather their memories and leave their past to be turned into rubble. As they gather their things, the TV screen shows a report on displacement of the residents of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem.
The director made the film before the events of October 7, 2023, but the narrative—and the pain—are repeated precisely. Being forced to evacuate has an impact on the neighbourhood’s residents that parallels the forced displacement of residents of the Gaza Strip. That pain is echoed in the devastation of the two brothers, Ziad and Moody, at the prospect of spending their last day in their beloved home.
As long as injustice persists, there will be those who are forced to migrate against their will.
The Orchards / Al Basateen
If the heroes of The Last Day have to leave an apartment behind them, the characters of The Orchards leave an entire homeland.French director Antoine Chapon approaches the Syrian diaspora from a unique angle—memories of the Basateen Al-Razi district of the capital Damascus. Those who once lived there describe it in the film as the “flank” of Damascus, but when residents decided to take part in the popular uprising against Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, they were to pay a high price.
The neighborhood was flattened, and its residents were forced, like millions of others, to flee the country. The regime drew up a plan to re-establish the district under a new name, with a design including skyscrapers. While it turned out to be the mere illusion of a regime that later demonstrated its fragility, news of the plan created a paradox in the minds of those who had been forced to leave their neighborhood at gunpoint or under the threat and arrest.
The paradox lived within them for more than 10 years, until Chapon decided to give it a cinematic treatment.
In the film, former residents of Basateen Al-Razi recall their memories, narrating the events that rocked Damascus before they left, and what was to happen there later. The director enlists the help of graphic designers to reimagine the neighbourhood according to the memories of its residents, and to draw how the neighborhood should be, in a truly new image, where the walls are allowed to bear slogans calling for the downfall of those who destroyed the neighborhood.
And the story continues…
Showing The Last Day and The Orchards together in one short film program was a smart choice by the programmers of “Forum Expanded.” Placing each of the two films in a broader context, they presented the audience with different variations on the same painful idea: that while the world boasts of freedoms and human rights, there are still people everywhere who are forced to leave their homes, their homelands, their memories, and leave—simply because a tyrant wants them to.
February 2025