You Don't Die Two Times
Fall Grants 2018 - Development Stage
Ager Oueslati / Feature Documentary / Algeria, Qatar / 2020 / Original Language: Arabic / Interests: Immigration, Creative Documentary, Women Issues
Synopsis
Jenny and Gift, two sisters respectively 22 and 28 years old, are in North Niger, waiting to travel to Europe. They left Lagos, Nigeria, to join a smuggler in Agades. Upon their arrival, the initial price of their journey doubled and their smuggler forced them into prostitution. Without any representation in this country, they have no other choice. Kilometres from there, Prisca left Ivory Coast for Tunis, in the hope of reaching Europe. She heard about an Ivorian middle-man, who could help her reach the European “El Dorado”. When Prisca left her job in Abidjan, she entrusted her children to her sister before leaving the country. Since then, she has entered the hell that is the slave trade. Forced to work for a Tunisian family, and taken on a route with no return, she made her way to Libya, before dying in the Mediterranean Sea in September 2016.
Credits
- Director
- Ager Oueslati
- Producer
- Belkacem Hadjadj
- Production Company
- Machahou Production
- Production Company
- Machahou Production
About the Director
Ager Oueslati grew up like many immigrant children from the 1970s-80s in the Parisian suburbs, or what she calls the Babel Tower where families had left their home country for different reasons. Her father fled Bourguiba’s Tunisia, while her mother left her native Algeria. They met in Paris and named their firstborn Ager, which means migration. After graduating in journalism, Ager worked on the television documentary ‘The Women’s Jungle’ (2016), about the condition of immigrant women stuck in the camp of Calais.