Don't Get Too Comfortable
Fall Grants 2020 - Production Stage
Shaima Al Tamimi / Short Experimental / Yemen, United Arab Emirates, United States of America, Netherlands, Qatar / 2022 / 9 min / Original Language: Arabic, English, Swahili / Interests: History, Social Issues, Immigration, Based on a True Story, Creative Documentary
Synopsis
When Shaima Al-Tamimi’s paternal grandfather migrated from Yemen to Zanzibar half a century ago to find work, little did he know that migration would continue as a pattern for later generations of his family. Having lived through a deadly revolution in the early 1960s powered by British colonialism, he fled back to Yemen with members of the family, including Shaima’s father. Fast forward 55 years and five countries later, she is a member of a generation of Yemenis who have grown up confused, marginalised and deprived of opportunities to thrive due to the limitations of being a Yemeni passport holder even while living outside their homeland. ‘Don’t Get Too Comfortable’ fuses archival images, found footage, parallax animation and sound design to create a multimedia letter to the director’s paternal grandfather, reflecting on the migration and resettlement of her family following his death over fifty years ago. Family photos, archival materials, and self-portraits by the director place the viewer in-between time and space, calling attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being, felt by Yemeni migrants and their descendants. This introspection attempts to heal intergenerational trauma, creating space for a new and more nuanced narrative of Yemeni migration.
Credits
- Director
- Shaima Al Tamimi
- Screenwriter
- Shaima Al Tamimi
- Producer
- Shaima Al Tamimi, Mayar Hamdan
About the Director
Shaima Al-Tamimi, a Yemeni-East African visual storyteller based in Qatar, uses her lived experiences to address social issues focusing on migration, healing, and sociocultural dynamics. A 2020 Photography and Social Justice Fellow at the Magnum Foundation, she created ‘Don’t Get Too Comfortable’ (2021), which was nominated for the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film at the Venice International Film Festival and showcased at over 35 festivals worldwide. Shaima is also on the board of YWT, an organisation based in Yemen that focuses on providing opportunities in film mentorship and production to the youth of Yemen.