SYNOPSIS
The residents of a small Moroccan city endure separate lives while knowing the same cycles of burden and small joys. Wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters maneuver their way through mourning as death takes loved ones and life insists on moving forward. Here, letting go is a challenge for both the dead and the living. The people of this city share the same world, but don’t always know when they live in each other’s lives, helping and harming each other. Connected by friendship, proximity, and blood, they both destroy and support each other. Through weddings, funerals, murders, forgiveness, love, new birth, and sacrifice, the living build community and hope. Meanwhile, the souls of the dead linger to watch over loved ones.
DIRECTORS’ NOTE
»Collapsed Walls« came out of a time of reflection on intimate stories collected over a few years. These stories are short and thematically bound by the time and space they inhabit. This is a visual meditation on a people’s inner lives, woven through the thread of the shared humanity that connect the characters involved. It is a celebration of daily struggle and ambivalence. A sober peak into the fates that might, on the surface, appear bleak.
SHORT BIO
Hakim Belabbes is an award winning Moroccan American independent filmmaker. Hakim taught film at Columbia College and The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. He also restructured and ran The Film Education and Grants Department at the Doha Film Institute, and created The Qumra Film Festival Concept for the same Institute. Hakim created The Sahara Lab Initiative which he currently runs with partners Don Smith and Hammadi Gueroum. Soon, he will be launching Sahara Lab Film Institute (SLFI). Among his films are:
Collapsed Walls (2021)
Sweat Rain (2017)
Weight of The Shadow (2014)
Defining Love: A Failed Attempt (2013)
Fragments (2011)
Boiling Dreams (2010)
These Hands... (2008)
Why O’ Sea? (2006)
Threads (2003)
A Nest in the Heat (2001)
CREDITS
Title: Collapsed Walls
Duration: 2 hours and 16 minutes
Genre: Drama
Cast:
Amine Naji
Hassna Moumni
Zhour Slimani
Sanaa El Alaoui
Hanane Benmoussa
Hamid Najah
Rabab El Khechibi
Younes Yousfi
Zaynab Alji
Nabil El Mansouri
Fatima Zahra Lahouitar
Amine Talidi
Khalil Oubaaqa
Moncef Kabri
Salah Laasri
Written & Directed by: Hakim Belabbes
Cinematography: Amine Messadi
Sound: Samir Mellouk
Music: Magdalena Sustere
Editing: Erin Turney, Hakim Belabbes
Produced by: HAK Films
IMAGE GALLERY
