KUM-KUM
Genre
Drama
Running time
15 minutes
Year
2022
Language
Arabic
Subtitle
English
Country
Saudi Arabia
Director
Dur Jamjoom
Bio
Producer
Lama Jarkas
Cast
Nada Basaad, Dana Alkadhi
Scriptwriter
Dur Jamjoom
When 17-year-old Duna invites three friends to her beach house, she is expecting a fun-filled day. But while the other girls are splashing each other in the sea and playing a game of Kum-Kum, Duna witnesses a terrible event: Salwa, another girl she knows, drowns in a kayaking accident. Duna is traumatized and struggles afterwards with residual feelings of hopelessness and an enduring fear of the water. It is only years later that she realizes she must go back to the beach to teach her little sister how to swim, confronting and defeating her own fear while helping someone else. Her story gives a powerful account of grief, healing and the human capacity to find inner strength in the face of trauma.
Other movies
SEEKING HAVEN FOR MR. RAMBO
Director: Khaled Mansour
Hassan, his mother and his beloved dog Rambo are threatened with eviction by their landlord Karem, a car mechanic who wants to use their house to expand his workshop. Rising tensions culminate in a street fight between Karem and Hassan, settled by Rambo when he leaps in and bites Karem in the crotch. Humiliated, Karem promises bloody revenge. Thus begins Hassan’s search for a safe haven for his friend, a journey that will take him into the city’s underbelly, but also into the heart of his own fears, changing him forever. Sparked by a real incident, this is a film about the strong relationship between a man and his dog and a nuanced reflection on everyday violence.
CROCODILE TEARS
Director: Tumpal Tampubolon
On a Crocodile Farm in West Java, Indonesia, a young boy reaches puberty, and his problems with his mother start. Johan, a young man tethered to his mother, Mama, by invisible but unbreakable chains, dreams of freedom yet remains under her suffocating grip. Isolated from the world, their life on the farm is a tense routine of survival and emotional manipulation, disrupted only when a young woman’s arrival threatens the delicate balance. As Johan begins to see through Mama’s relentless hold, he confronts the painful reality of their bond: is it love, or is it tyranny? Director Tumpal Tampubolon dives deep into the tangled web of family loyalty and control in this haunting drama raising timeless questions about family, power, and the cost of independence.
AGORA
Director: Ala Eddine Slim
A blue dog and a black crow narrate the strange story of three revenants – people who are not quite dead, but not alive either – who resurge in a remote town, reviving the unsolved mysteries around their respective disappearances. Fathi, the local police inspector, is on the case, assisted by his friend Amine, the local doctor. What begins as a conventionally recognisable crime thriller, however, becomes more of a mood piece once Omar, a police investigator from the city, arrives to shine a light on what has happened and is overwhelmed by the irrationality of the chain of events. At once absurd and disturbing, Agora gradually reveals itself as both poetic fable and a political commentary on the state of Tunisia.
TO KILL A MONGOLIAN HORSE
Director: Xiaoxuan Jiang
Saina’s father never taught him to ride: he simply put him on the back of a horse, a Mongolian herdsman’s natural habitat. Saina now earns his living performing spectacular tricks in equestrian shows for tourists, trying to make enough money to cover his father’s gambling debts as well as support his little son. His true vocation, however, is caring for his sheep and horses on the grasslands that stretch as far as the eye can see - a way of life under threat from climate change, encroaching poverty and profiteering mining companies. A moving, superbly shot portrait of a man clinging to the things that make that life worthwhile: the endless sky, the silence, his herdsman’s heritage and his beloved horses.
