Looking for Spiderman
(development phase)
Original Title
البحث عن سبايدر مان
Director
Nadia Ghanem
Producer/co-Producer
Nadia Ghanem
A Kiss in the Desert
Editing
Yohanna Nagui
Language
Arabic
Awards and Prizes
2021: 1,500 USD in the form of
consultation sessions: A Kiss in the Desert
2024: The Documentary Film Programme: AFAC

Synopsis

As his mother slowly loses her memory and begins calling for her deceased cousin, the former Minister of Defense during the 1967 defeat against Israel, my father faces his own turmoil. He grapples with his son’s decision to join the French army, feeling haunted by “The Elephants”, a book written 40 years earlier by his own father. In the book, a man loses his son to a foreign paramilitary group, a narrative now eerily mirrored in his own life. To break this cycle of intergenerational defeat, my father takes a symbolic step and demolishes the walls of the family house, restoring it to its original design before 1967.

About the director:

Nadia Ghanem is a filmmaker who lives and works in Paris. She recently finished her first short film as a director Three Disappearances And A Song (2021) which premiered at the 43rd edition of the Cairo International Film Festival, Images Festival, Cinema Árabe Feminino in Brazil and received the best short film award at Gabes Cinema Fen (Tunisia) as well as the audience and Jury awards for best short film at Manassat Film Festival in Cairo.

Nadia is currently working on her first feature Looking for Spiderman which received development awards from A Kiss in the Desert, Rawiyat Film Collective, Two Stories Production, Dox Box, AFAC, and is part of the Studio Seen program. In parallel to being a filmmaker, Nadia Ghanem curated film programs for the 24th edition of the Videoex festival in Basel and since 2022 has been a programmer for the Panorama of the European Film organised by Zawya Arthouse Cinema in Cairo. She also works as a Program Manager at Medrar for Contemporary Art where she coordinated the 10th edition of the Cairo Video Festival.