
WALK UP
Other movies

MY FRIEND AN DELIE
Director: Zijian Dong
This remarkable adaptation of Shuang Xuetao’s novel is the debut film from actor-turned-director Dong Zijian that flashes back and forth in time to tell a touching story of friendship and family strife. Following his father’s death, Limo (Liu Haoran) is flying back to his hometown in northeastern China, when he spots his childhood friend An Delie (played by director Zijian) (Dong) on the plane, who fails to recognise him. When their flight is diverted because of heavy snow, the duo go on a journey that brings back long-forgotten memories in which Limo has to deal with the demons from his past. Beautifully photographed by Pema Tsedan across two time periods, the film shows the long-term emotional impact of the traumas of our childhood.

YALLA PARKOUR
Director: Areeb Zuaiter
One of Zuaiter’s strongest memories of her mother is her radiant smile as a young woman on the beach in Gaza on one of the family’s regular holidays to Palestine. Her cousins would mock Areeb’s “outsider” accent, but according to her mother, this was where she belonged. From her current home in the US, Zuaiter combs the web for images that evoke something of her mother and finds teenager Ahmed Matar and his friends, a parkour team who use the ruins of Gaza’s bombed buildings as obstacle courses, laughing for joy against a background of explosions. She tracks Ahmed down online and the two become friends; meanwhile, he is determined that parkour will be his route out of the prison their shared homeland has become.