Feature Documentary Film
TOTAL BUDGET
US $ 300,000
CONFIRMED FINANCING
US $ 30,000
CONTACT
m_siam2000@yahoo.com.com
+33668679070
Ethel is a Jewish-Algerian student, born to Algerian immigrant parents. She is a member of the “yellow vests” movement. When the Algerian movement catalyzes in March 2019, Ethel decides to go to Algeria on a self-searching odyssey to find her roots.
Ethel is a 22-year-old art student who has too many social, political and existential questions about her future and identity. The young woman is very creative, rebellious and militant in her fight. She stands at the crossroads of many fronts: her career, her sexuality, her life choices, her Arab-Jewish background and its implications notwithstanding. Ethel is also an artist who has been filming her own life and creating a personal video diary of herself, and her progress since her childhood.
She joins the “yellow vests” movement in November 2018, and shortly thereafter, public protests arise in Algiers, snowballing into a nationwide movement that resonates with Ethel and questioning her identity.
Ethel’s family have long ignored their origins and even tried to separate themselves from them, feeling that those origins have worked against them in the past. Ethel, on the other hand, is on the verge of discovering what it means to be half Algerian, half French; half Muslim, half Jewish; to belong to two countries that experience political turmoil after long years of violent history, causing wounds to fester across generations. While questions of immigration, identity and religion are forcing Ethel to take sides between her family, friends and political views, she has to confront real life and her roots after graduation, through her first trip to Algeria this fall.
This film is an intersectional transition between Amal, my last film—about an Egyptian teenager who survived the Arab spring while searching for her identity—and the period when I partially lived in France during my fellowship. I participated in the demonstrations and met Ethel in the streets among the “yellow vests.”
Having lived through the Egyptian revolution and its consequences, I have learned that political movements have resonance long after the news has depicted the first glimpses of the young faces fronting them, and the cameras have stopped rolling. That is, indeed, the moment when the real stories begin.
This time, my focus is the lost youth between several identities that are on opposing sides. All of these battles happen within one person who absorbs these political and religious struggles.
I intend to follow Ethel’s story by accompanying her in her journey to Algeria, in her quest to be able to express herself freely and truly as an independent young woman with Arab origins and Jewish heritage. I also intend to follow Ethel through her next steps in finding a job, finding her voice as an artist, trying to fight for her beliefs, and her resistance against settling for a corporate job. During this period, I reckon that she would confront all the contrasting aspects of her being, and return as a different person. I aim to explore how that would affect her life in France with both her Muslim and Jewish communities, especially in the context of the new limiting immigration laws and discrimination.
From the first images I saw from Siam's documentary Amal, I was amazed. Everything spoke to me; from the way Siam filmed it, to the refined editing and directing. I told Siam that if he ever decided to work on another film, I wanted to be involved in it.
Having attended many festivals together, we got along, and achieved a convincing treatment. A year later, Siam contacted me to work together on Ethel, an ambitious and intense film with a vision that is colorful, harsh and grounded, all at the same time. This was exactly the kind of cinema I want to support and defend.
International co-productions are the trademark of our work. We have many contacts in Europe and in the Arab world, as we have participated in all A-list film festivals and won many prizes for our films in both regions.
ArtKhana
2018: The Path
2017: Amal
2016: Whose Country?
2015: The Trials of the Spring
Les Films de l’Après-Midi
2019: Made in Bangladesh, Noura’s Dream
2018: Fatima, Our Madness, Yesterday (Hier), Alice T
2010: The Strange Case of Angelica
2009: Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl
2007: Christopher Columbus – The Enigma
Thala Films
2019: Abou Leila