Streamed online June 30 through July 6
When filmmaker Asmae El Moudir discovers an old picture postcard of a mountain village among her mother’s belongings, the image brings to life an extraordinary tale. The postcard depicts Zawia, the village in Morocco that her mother left behind as a child. El Moudir decides that she will go to this remote place. Once in Zawia, where time itself seems to have stood still, she embarks on a quest into her mother’s past and, in so doing, her own. She connects on a personal level with the women and girls in the village. One of the young girls is Oum Aleid. The better El Moudir gets to know Oum and her family, the more she realizes how different her own life would have been if her mother had remained there. What starts off as an intimate, personal journey evolves into a universal story about emancipation, migration, and the human yearning to belong. (Asmae El Moudir, 2020, 83 minutes)