In this short film compilation, the history of modern Lebanon is re-written through the perspective of a worn-out robot, a childhood memory from Kuwait is reconstructed as alien-abduction conspiracy, while a man in Egypt travelling in time foresees a scene set in the aftermath of a fictional revolution. Another man is trapped in time and space, fulfilling a scientist’s obsession with eternity, and finally, a solution to the Palestinian state is envisioned in the form of a single skyscraper housing the entire Palestinian population.

Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow

Lebanon | 2018 | 30 min | directed by Fadi Baki | language: Arabic with English subtitles

A young filmmaker investigates the legend of Manivelle, an automaton gifted to Lebanon in 1945 that still haunts an abandoned mansion in Beirut. After being coaxed back out into the limelight, the people who knew him come forward to speak their mind, and the myth that Manivelle has constructed around himself begins to unravel. A science-fiction mockumentary out of Lebanon, Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow is a funny, sad and weird look at the life of the Middle East's First and only living robot and the stories you won’t find in your history books.

Threshold

Lebanon / Egypt | 2018 | 11 min | directed by Rania Stephan | language: Arabic with English subtitles

Entirely taken from an old Egyptian science fiction film called The Master of Time (1987, directed by Kamal el Sheikh) about an illuminated scientist wanting to extend human life, Threshold is built on the intuition that if the original film was emptied of all its fictional elements, retaining only the transition shots featuring doors, gates and boundary crossings, it would reveal its quintessence: its obsession with eternity. Despite the plot being evacuated from the film, enough of the fiction seeps in for the viewer to grasp the narrative threads. The viewer joins the main character Mr. Kamel in becoming stuck in both space and time, thus fulfilling the scientist's prophecy.

2026

2010 | 9 min | directed by Maha Maamoun | language: English

An iconic scene from Chris Marker’s film La Jetée (1962) of a man traveling back in time in post-apocalyptic Paris is re-enacted here in a deserted building in contemporary Egypt. The reading of an excerpt from The Revolution of 2053: The Beginning (2007), an Arabic-language science fiction novel by Egyptian author Mahmoud Osman, has been dubbed over the photographic sequence.
Maha Maamoun created this film a year before the revolution of 2011 that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak. The afterlife of 2026 in the Egyptian political context lends an additional resonance to a work already meditating on the nature of memory, teleology, and cause and effect relations. Viewed today, the film appears to foretell real-world events, while returning us to the present-time of its production on the eve of a revolution by narrating a scene set on the threshold of fictional revolution.

The Craft

Kuwait I 2018 I 16 min I directed by Monira Al Qadiri I language: English

Housed in the obsolete atmosphere of an artificially constructed American diner, The Craft is a film that revolves around childish fictions laced with serious suspicions towards the real world. Using the lens of family history, the film dissects the artist’s own past to reexamine an uncanny relationship taking place in the shadows of her major life events: “Were my parents conspiring with aliens behind my back?” Reality gradually disintegrates like quicksand around this central question, as paranoia and speculation begin to take hold. Futuristic architecture, popular culture, dream readings, junk food, alien abductions, geopolitics, international diplomacy, war and peace; all of these once solid staples of modern life now become tinted with a general sense of distrust, overshadowing everything. Like a ticking time bomb at the center of the nuclear family unit, the suspicion reaches a crescendo when the protagonist suddenly discovers that the American century has finally ended.

Nation Estate

Lebanon | 2012 | 9 min | directed by Larissa Sansour | language: Arabic with English subtitles

A 9-minute sci-fi short film offering a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the Middle East. With a mixture of computer-generated imagery, live actors and arabesque electronica, Nation Estate explores a vertical solution to Palestinian statehood. In Sansour’s film, Palestinians have their state in the form of a single skyscraper: the Nation Estate. One colossal high-rise houses the entire Palestinian population – now finally living the high life. Each city has its own floor: Jerusalem on the 13th floor, Ramallah on the 14th floor, Sansour’s native Bethlehem on the 21st and so on. Intercity trips previously marred by checkpoints are now made by elevator. Aiming for a sense of belonging, the lobby of each floor reenacts iconic squares and landmarks.

Suspended Presents, Stolen Futures: Sci-Fi, Humor and Nostalgia in New Arab Cinema is a program series curated by Mira Adoumier and Silja Espolin Johnson with support from the Norwegian Film Institute.