By Lemohang Mosese 90’ France, Germany, Lesotho 2025
DOCUMENTARY FORM
SYNOPSIS
Ancestral Visions of the Future is a deeply personal work from filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese. With fragmented narratives and mythical images, he crafts a haunting reflection on dislocation and belonging. Enter: the Puppeteer, a man who tends herbs that extend people’s lifespans to grant humanity time for redemption. And the Market Seller, a mother who keeps the language of dreams alive in a city that has forgotten how to speak it. The film also explores Mosese’s childhood and his relentless dance to evade death and wrest meaning from loss. From the dusty gravel roads where he played with toy wire cars as a seven-year-old to the dispassionate streets of exile where he dissolved into anonymity, Mosese confronts the moments that shattered and shaped him. His memories intertwine with the presence of his mother, a figure of vigilance and defiance. But Ancestral Visions of the Future is more than the story of one man’s exile – it is also an elegy for a city and a people caught between the weight of memory and the inevitability of loss. And it is a poetic ode to cinema.
by Lemohang Mosese (Director, Screenplay)
with Siphiwe Nzima, Sobo Bernard, Mochesane Kotsoane, Rehauhetsoe Kotsoane
90′
Producers: Agat Film (France), Mokoari Street (Lesotho), SEERA
Films (Germany)
World Sales: Memento International
Languages: English Subtitles: English
Festivals
75. Berlin International Film Festival – Berlinale Special
Cinema du Réel 2025 – Opening Film
2021 70 I 52 min
Egypt / Tunisia / Germany
Genre: Documentary
Director: Ines Marzouk
Producer: Kesmat Elsayed
Sales Agent: Limonero Films, UK
Golden-age Sarannah is married to Hamdy, an Egyptian man 30-years her junior. Could this be true love – or is it yet another unspoken ‘business’ relationship so often seen in contemporary Luxor? Sarannah feels she was given a new shot at life at 50 and can now re-live her youth. Madly in love with Hamdy, all she wants to do is spend time with him and enjoy life. In her eyes, he is not like the other gold-digging Egyptian men. Certainly not like Khaled, who married her friend Nerchia, before finding a much younger 2nd Egyptian wife to provide him with children. Nerchia struggles to accept that the kind loving man she loved changed so drastically. She has to make hard decisions now that she knows his true color. As for Abdel-Rahim, a local tour guide married with 2 kids, he will do anything to find a well-to-do foreign woman to secure his future. In the primitive part of the touristic city of Luxor, locals try to escape poverty by marrying older, foreign women. Abdel, like many others, connects with women online to entice them to move to Luxor. It is through an online platform he connects with an older German woman, Monica. After a few months of online romance, she falls for him, moves to Luxor and promises to take care of him. Through confessional meetings with these couples, we get a rare and honest insight into these relationships – mutual arrangements of a sort, that blurs the boundaries between business and romance.
Festivals & Awards
A film by Bassam Mortada
Documentary, 83min, HD
Director of photography: Maged Nader
Producer Egypt: Kesmat ElSayed
Co Producers Germany: Anna Chester, Anke
Petersen
Country of production: Egypt, Germany
Original language: Arabic
Bassam Mortada was five years old when he first visited father Mahmoud in the notorious Abo Zaabal prison. With
the police raid still fresh in his mind, his experience was dominated by incomprehension. But in the years that
followed, resentment took hold. Bassam was raised by his mother Fardous, a socialist activist herself. As a single parent, her life was hard, and when Mahmoud was finally released from prison he seemed like different person. He left for Vienna, and for a second time she was left behind, this time embittered. Bassam grew alienated from both, suppressing his own trauma and confusion.
In this documentary, he films his efforts to renew and restore relationships with his parents and find a path to historical truth, emotional comprehension and psychological healing, as he tries to reconstruct how his parents’ political activism has shaped their family. Through conversations with his parents and their friends, the cassette tapes his father sent from Vienna, a theatrical monologue by his father’s best friend, newspaper archives and found footage, he shows the impact of the “big” history of Egypt on the “small” history of his family.
WORLD PREMIERE CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL CIFF
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE INTERNATIONAL
DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM IDFA
AWARDS
Best Feature Documentary Award
The Africa No Filter Special Jury Award
International Critics Week Special Mention
By Mohamed Rashad (Director, Screenplay) with Adham Shoukry, Ziad Islam, Hajar Omar, Mohamed Abdel Hady, Emad Ghoneim
94′
Egypt, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia 2025
Arabic
Subtitles: English
The 23-year-old Hossam begins working in the factory in Alexandria where his father died in an accident a month previously. The job has been offered to the family as compensation for the father’s death, enabling them to continue having an income. Hossam’s 12-year-old brother Maro insists on accompanying Hossam to the factory and threatens to harm himself if he is held back. At their mother’s insistence, Hossam takes the boy to the factory, meaning Maro abandons his schooling and enters the harsh world of child labour. Hossam shoulders the responsibility for providing for his disabled mother and his younger brother. At the factory, the brothers meet other workers, including Mostafa, who bears partial responsibility for their father’s death. The workers praise the boys’ father but remain wary of the brothers, fearing the two are there to take revenge. In the following weeks, Hossam does everything he can to smooth things over and get on good terms with everyone. But then, another tragic accident takes place and the life he has worked so hard to build slips through his fingers.
2021 64 min
Egypt
Genre: Documentary
Director: Hala Galal
Producer: Kesmat Elsayed
Distributor: MEC Films (Europe)
Hala Galal finds Cairo hunting her, fear crippling her, she meets Heba and Aya. Two women who are leading a single life but managing to face their fears and carve a space for their dreams.
Festivals & Awards
2024 6 x 20 min
Sudan / Germany
Genre: Satirical Series
Director: Hassan
Producer: Kompass / Sudan
Co-Producer: Kesmat Elsayed / Germany
LOGLINE + SHORT SYNOPSIS
“Conference 27” is a satirical dark comedy web series that subtly and indirectly delves into the enduring question: “Why does Sudan continue to grapple with the challenge of building the ideal state, and what are the obstacles in our path?” This thought-provoking inquiry is examined across a spectrum of themes, encompassing the economy, identity, governance, militias, gender dynamics, and societal conventions.
A group of “mediocre” Sudanese politicians travel for a conference to find that they have been abducted by an anonymous organization and forced to come up with a vision for all of Sudan’s lingering problems by the end of the conference.
After being invited to “conference 27” in Berlin, a group of Sudanese politicians discover that they are being held captive by an anonymous organization that calls itself “Forces of the Dark”. This organization threatens to never set them free if they fail to formulate a comprehensive vision that solves all Sudan’s lingering issues.
Following the onset of the war in April 2023, discussions on political matters either exacerbated polarization or seemed inconsequential to those grappling with the hardships of losing their homes, families, and homeland. Social media trends revealed a collective sense of mourning and a heightened interest in entertainment. This web series emerges as an endeavor to communicate with the audience using a tone they are receptive to. Through a subtle exploration of diverse political and social issues, this series aims to blend the significance of pertinent questions with an artistic approach to presenting them.
https://linktr.ee/conference27
2011 62 min
Egypt
Genre: Documentary
Director: Bassam Mortada
Producer: Kesmat Elsayed
Film follows six Egyptian journalists during the first 18 days of the Egyptian revolution 2011, focussing on their stories and their inner conflicts as they are torn between sympathizing with the rebellion and doing their duty as neutral reporters for an independent newspaper. Leading up to the stepping down of Hosni Mubarak, the viewer gets swept up in the events on and around Tharir Square in Cairo with stunning and often very moving footage and interviews.
