Teta, Alf Marra

Dec 9 2011 G 0h 50m
Biography, Documentary, Family

Teta Kaabour is an 83-year old family matriarch and sharp-witted queen bee of an old Beiruti quarter. She’s been gripped as of late by the silence of her once-buzzing household where she raised children and grandchildren. Resigned to Argileh smoking and day-long coffee drinking on a now-empty balcony, Teta now invokes the deepest memories of her violinist husband who died twenty years ago. She claims a preparedness to re-unite with him.

Plot

A poetic documentary that puts a feisty Beiruti grandmother at the center of brave film exercises designed to commemorate her many worlds before they are erased by the passage of time and her eventual death. With great intimacy, the film documents the larger-than-life character Teta Fatima as she struggles to cope with the silence of her once-buzzing house and imagines what awaits her beyond death. Meanwhile, the features of her beloved violinist husband (deceased 20 years) manifest through the face of their filmmaker grandson while his previously unpublished violin improvisations weave through her world and that of the film. It brings together grandfather, grandmother and grandson in a magic-realist documentary that aims to defy a past death and a future one.

Written by

N/A

Directed by

Mahmoud Kaabour

Production Countries

Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon

Production Companies

Veritas Films, Screen Institute Beirut

Languages

Awards

3 wins & 2 nominations

Scores
# of Votes
103
Average Rating
7.6 out of 10
Metascore
77
Popularity
NA