Award-winning, Egyptian filmmaker Nadia Kamel's heritage is a complex blend of religions and cultures. Her mother is a half Jewish, half Italian Christian who converted to Islam when she married Nadia's half Turkish, half Ukrainian father. Prompted by the realization that her 10-year-old nephew Nabeel is growing up in an Egyptian society where talk of culture clashes is all too common, she decides to let her mother Mary Rosenthal share their diverse family history.

A film by Nadia Kamel
Egypt/Israel/Italy/Palestine, 2008, 105 minutes, Color, DVD, Arabic, Subtitled

"The original inspiration for this film was simple enough," says Kamel, "a love for my family's stories and a wish to share them. It was a storytelling project." But, as she and Mary weave their way through the family's fairytales, they bump into the silence around old prejudices concerning the estranged Egyptian-Jewish branch of their family living in Israel since 1948. Inspired to further challenge the boundaries between cultures, religions and nationalities that are used to divide us, Kamel travels, along with her mother and nephew, to Israel and Italy and confronts fears and prejudices along the way. "My storytelling film became witness to a new story still in the making," says Kamel, "a story about my family's efforts to once more climb the wall that unjustly insists on separating our principles from our humanity."
-Munich International Documentary Film Festival


"A welcome reminder that beyond politics lie people with much more in common than their leaders are willing to acknowledge… [a] multilingual, multiethnic documentary."
Jay Weissberg
Variety

AWARDS, FESTIVALS, & SCREENINGS

2008 Mumbai International Film Festival Golden Conch, Best Long Documentary & Special Prize for International Critics Jury FIPRESCI
San Francisco Arab Film Festival, Noor Award for Outstanding Documentary
International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam
Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland
Middle East International Film Festival
Mumbai International Film Festival
Munich International Documentary Film Festival
San Francisco Arab Film Festival
Ayam Beirut Festival