ACID will screen world premieres of Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk, and Namir Abdel Messeeh’s second feature doc Life After Siham, as well as the French premiere of Sylvain George’s Obscure Night – Ain’t I A Child? The Critics Week sidebar for first and second features will include a sole doc, Imago by Déni Oumar Pitsaev, as will Directors Fortnight, which has selected the Ukrainian feature doc Militantropos by Alina Gorlova, Yelizaveta Smith and Simon Mozgovyi.
CANNES ACID
Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk recently pitched as a work-in-progress at Visions du Réel Industry. “I couldn’t go to the under-siege Gaza, so I had to find another way to make a film,” she told delegates in Nyon. “Then I met Fatem, a young photographer, holding under the bombs in Northern Gaza, surviving and documenting the war. Fatem became my eyes, sending me bits of her life and her photos, and I became a prism through which she could access the outside world in a way, from her Gaza prison, as she puts it herself.”
In Namir Abdel Messeeh’s second feature doc Life After Siham, when Siham passed away, Namir didn’t realize that she was gone forever. In a child’s mind, mothers are immortal. To keep her memory alive, Namir delves into his family history across Egypt and France. With the cinema of Youssef Chahine as his companion, a story of exile — and above all, of love — begins to unfold.
Sylvain George’s Obscure Night – Ain’t I A Child? world-premiered recently in International Competition at Visions du Réel. After having walked the streets of Mellila, Malik, Mehdi, and Hassan now beat the cobblestones of Paris, discovering its lights and its chimeras, its joys and its violence… In this closing chapter of a trilogy on policies of migration, Sylvain George accompanies the street children of Morocco through this complex age and ordeal, while Europe turns a blind eye.
CRITICS WEEK/SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE
Chechen filmmaker Déni Oumar Pitsaev’s debut documentary Imago is an autobiographical tale set in a Georgian valley bordering Chechnya where the filmmaker attempts to build a house marrying futuristic design and local tradition.
In his recent Cinéma du réel (March 2025) notes for the film, Pitsaev wrote: “The film will be a documentary tale: I will move through this almost unknown world, seeking to understand its special codes, often fearing what I’ll find behind a door, while yearning to push it open… and doing so. I will play on the ambiguity of my situation: both external and internal to the village, both Chechen and yet foreign.”
French producer Alexandra Mélot summed up to BDE the film’s broad-ranging appeal. “The committed nature of the film and its resonance with contemporary issues will undoubtedly bring it to the attention of the younger generation, those who identify with the search for gender identity and the deconstruction of patriarchy, movements that are very strong in the world today.”
DIRECTORS FORTNIGHT
The Ukrainian feature doc Militantropos by Alina Gorlova, Yelizaveta Smith and Simon Mozgovyi is selected for Quinzaine 2025. The observational documentary, which consists of several parts, describes the war in Ukraine from numerous angles. The chaos of war not only tears apart the physical world but also the sense of self, reads the film’s logline.
The film received a Special Mention at IDFA Forum in 2023. “Some of these films will transcend documentation and become Cinema. A rare few. Militantropos is one of those films. The film posits and then illustrates how war creates an altered state of existence, changing how we relate to ourselves and each other,” said the jury. “[It] invites us to think about the role of the director in a new way and witness the beauty of work created in a spirit of collaboration forged amidst conflict.”
