Mother of Silence
Fall Grants 2022 - Development Stage
Zahraa Ghandour / Feature Documentary / Iraq, Sweden, Qatar / Original Language: Arabic / Interests: Drama
Synopsis
Zahraa (30) revisits an incident that took place at her aunt Hayat’s (65) house in Baghdad twenty years ago when her childhood friend Noor disappeared. She witnessed Noor being violently dragged out to the street and later found out that she was abandoned in front of a mosque and left to an unknown destiny. Zahraa embarks on a search to find Noor after two decades—confronting her fears, secrets, and the possible association of her aunt Hayat with the crime, the midwife who helped bring both girls into the world.
She digs deep in Hayat’s house, where thousands of babies were born, hoping to strike a memory that leads her closer to Noor. Through the layered search, Zahraa must navigate her trauma and reality where the death and disappearance of women are happening daily in Iraq. She challenges reality by imagining a life free of fear and raises questions: How possible is it to find Noor; is she even alive? How does one break out of this cycle of fear? The story takes different routes between realist and imaginary worlds to draw a personal cinematic portrait of the state of women in a traumatised and repressed society.
Credits
- Director
- Zahraa Ghandour
- Screenwriter
- Zahraa Ghandour
- Producer
- Zahraa Ghandour, Hanna Markkanen
- Production Company
- Karada Films
About the Director
Zahraa is a filmmaker, producer, and independent actor. She is the executive producer and co-founder of Karada films production company based in Baghdad. Starting her career as a writer, TV presenter, and TV documentaries director, she also built a freelance career as a director and producer for the past decade for formats by UNDP, Al Araby TV, BBC Arabic, Breakthrough Media Productions, and others. Years later, she successfully started acting, winning several international awards for roles in productions like ‘The Journey’, ‘Baghdad In My Shadow’, and ‘Baghdad Central’ on Channel 4 and Hulu. She has written and directed ‘I Dream’, an experimental short film. In 2018, Zahraa attended intensive courses at MET Film School in Berlin. She is one of the International Emerging Film Talents Association’s (IEFTA) Global Film Expression initiative winners in 2021.
Contacts
-
Main Contact
Zahraa Ghandour
- Company:
- Karada Films
- Email:
- zahraaghandour@gmail.com
-
Main Contact
Hanna Markkanen
- Company:
- WG film
- Email:
- hanna@wgfilm.com