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A Way Home
IDFA 2020

A Way Home

Dans la maison
Karima Saïdi
Belgium, Morocco, France, Qatar
2020
90 min
World Premiere
Festival history

When filmmaker Karima Saïdi’s mother Aïcha develops Alzheimer’s at the end of her life, Karima decides to make a film portrait of her at her Brussels care home. Before oblivion descends for good.

Aïcha is becoming increasingly confused, and Karima takes her on mental journey back into her past. The filmmaker uses Aïcha’s stories and a wide range of family archive material to create an impression of Aïcha’s life. We start with her youth in Morocco, are shown how her husband brought her from Tangiers to Belgium, and how she later went on to raise her children as a single mother.

Aïcha’s answers to her daughter’s many and often repeated questions reveal the extent to which she has struggled with tradition, the position of women, and living between two cultures. And then there is the complex relationship between the two women themselves: Aïcha and her youngest daughter Karima. The daughter sparingly interweaves scenes of her mother as she is now with her personal history, in loving and poetic moments that capture life’s finite and fragile nature.

Credits
Director
Production
    Karim Aitouna for Haut les mains Productions,
    Julie Freres for Dérives
    Karim Aitouna for Haut les mains Productions,
    Julie Freres for Dérives
Cinematography
Editing
    Fréderic Fichefet
    Fréderic Fichefet
Sound
Sound Design
    Sara Kaddouri
    Sara Kaddouri
Involved TV Channel
    2M,
    RTBF,
    ARTE France
    2M,
    RTBF,
    ARTE France
Screening copy
    Haut les mains Productions
    Haut les mains Productions