Mondial 2010

مونديال 2010
Mondial 2010

Available on aashra video platform by Ashkal Alwan

2014 / 19'30'' / Arabic with English subtitles
Written and Directed by Roy Dib
Cast: Abed Kobeissy, Ziad Chakaroun
Sound Engineer: Fadi Tabbal and Stephane Reeves (Tunefork Recording Studios)

Awards
Teddy Award for Best Short Film - The TEDDY Award, Berlinale, Berlin 2014
Best First Film - Lebanese Film Festival, Beirut 2014
Inntravel Award - Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Berwick-Upon-Tweed 2014
Best Short Film - Queer Lisboa International Film Festival, Lisbon 2014
Uppsala Grand Prix - Uppsala International Short Film Festival, Uppsala 2014
Best Film Award - Sicilia Queer FilmFest Award, Sicily 2015
Special Mention - Palermo Pride, Sicilia Queer FilmFest Award, Sicily 2015
19th Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil / Southern Panoramas' Award - Vila Sul - Goethe-Institut Residency Prize

Synopsis
Mondial 2010 is a discussion of institutional borders in modern day Middle East. It uses video as an apparatus to transgress boundaries that are inflicted on people in spite of them. It is a travel film in a trajectory that doesn’t allow travel, starring two male lovers, in a setting where homosexuality is a punishable felony. Shot with a hand-held camcorder, Mondial 2010 borrows the aesthetics of a travel video log. It normalizes the abnormal, and by doing so creates its own universe of possibility. It is a shift from the mainstream passive view of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict that places the victim/oppressor in the forefront of the produced imagery. This video glides over this conflict with an upper hand.

Note:
The relations between Israelis and Lebanese are governed by the 1943 Lebanese Criminal Code and the 1955 Lebanese Anti-Israeli Boycott Law, the former of which forbids any interaction with nationals of enemy states, and the latter of which specifies Israelis, making a trip for a Lebanese citizen to Israel (or Palestinian Territories) impossible.

TEDDY AWARD FOR BEST SHORT FILM - Berlinale
Jury: Ellen Becht (Germany, Pride Pictures, Karlsruhe), Julián David ( Ciclo Rosa, Bogotá), Ana David (Queer Lisboa – International Queer Film Festival, Lisbon), Oscar Eriksson (Cinema Queer International Film Festival, Stockholm), Masha Godovannaya (Side By Side LGBT International Film Festival, St. Petersburg), Lucia Kajankova (Festival Mezipatra, Prague) Dave Kim (Seoul LGBT Film Festival), Andrew Murphy (Inside Out LGBT Film Festival, Toronto) Marten Rabarts (National Film Development Corporation of India).

"A film that takes us on a journey, both literal and personal through a hazardous landscape where invisibility is a necessary aspect of Queer survival."

INNTRAVEL AWARD - 10th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival
Jury: Catherine Shoard (The Guardian’s Head of Film), Marcus Coates (Artist-Filmmaker), Hilke Doering (Head of the International Competition at Oberhausen International Film Festival).

"the film was very special because it challenges its own genre in a sophisticated and innovative way, both subtle but compelling, handling a complexity of narratives within the personal, social and political. We felt this film uses a very familiar format in a fresh way, balancing the extremes of intimacy and anonymity that ambitiously deals with social and political crisis.”

BEST SHORT FILM - Queer Lisboa International Film Festival
Jury: Joana Ferreira (Producer), Ben Walters (Journalist), André Godinho (Director).

"The jury’s decision to recognise Mondial 2010 was an easy one. Roy Dib’s film seems simple, even offhand, but exhibits a rich cineastic sensibility that powerfully explores different notions of assimilation, intimacy and openness. It warmly expresses its main subjects’ characters though they are never seen. It hints at layers of necessary concealment and repression while recording a loving relationship. It conveys a disquieting sense of place that is at once locally specific and geopolitically resonant. And it makes you wonder: can a city be queer?"

UPPSALA GRAND PRIX - Uppsala International Short Film Festival
Jury: Oscar Eriksson (Folkets bio/Cinema Queer), Flavia Ferrucci (Good Short Films), Sytske Kok (filmskapare) and Matt Lloyd (Glasgow Short Film Festival)

"A travelogue, seen through the camera lens of two lovers, one showing the other the town in which he used to live, and the friends with whom he used to hang out. A holiday situation we can all recognise, complete with petty arguments and jealousies. And yet, the town is Ramallah, and the top tourist activity is to film the locals throwing stones and ducking smoke canisters. Meanwhile Israeli settlements hug the near horizon. Demonstrating tight control of a deceptively formless genre – the mock-home movie – and evoking ineffable feelings of dread, the director has visualised the almost imperceptible movement of historical forces, and created a rich and moving narrative with minimal resources. Without ever seeing the main characters we get to know them and care for them. A compelling way to portray a love, and an injustice, that society doesn’t want to see. The International Jury is delighted to present the 2014 Uppsala Grand Prix to MONDIAL 2010 by Roy Dib."

Editorial by Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival
Winner of the TEDDY Award at Berlinale, MONDIAL 2010 is a heart-breaking and deeply insightful musing on love, identity and the borders that restrain and define them. A Lebanese gay couple decides to take a road trip to Ramallah and we experience their journey first-person through the camera lens. Meeting their friends, sight-seeing at the West-Bank wall or simply observing the city as it zooms past the lens, are seen from a privileged perspective that looks beyond the travel-diary surface of the footage, to unravel a disheartening narrative drama. The politics of identity and its complexity have never been so achingly expressed. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF)