Sunday, March 16 / 2:00 pm / Ottawa Art Gallery

Program: welima’q, Who Do I Belong To, Q&A with Meryam Joobeur
Guest: Meryam Joobeur, director and writer of Who Do I Belong To

Feature presentation \

Having had its world premiere in the Official Competition at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival, Meryam Joobeur’s first feature film is a complex, poetic elaboration of her Oscar-nominated short film, Brotherhood (2018). Her powerful short dealt with the impact on a rural Tunisian family of the radicalization of one of their sons, who returns home from the war in Syria. In Who Do I Belong To, we are back in the village in northern Tunisia where matriarch Aicha lives with her husband and their youngest son, Adam. Haunted by the absence of two older sons who left for war, their lives are changed when one of them, Mehdi, unexpectedly returns, accompanied by a pregnant, silent wife who wears a niqab. Aicha’s maternal devotion blinds her to growing tensions, even as ominous signs begin to emerge in the village about Mehdi’s jihadist past. Caught between love and truth, Aicha struggles to hold her family together while unsettling events push her to confront secrets that threaten not only her family but the entire community. A deeply atmospheric drama blending stark realism with Aicha’s haunting dreams and visions, the film explores themes of belonging, grief, and the invisible but lingering scars of radicalization.

- Tom McSorley

Short film \

welima’q

2024 / 5 minutes / Nova Scotia
Director: shalan joudry
Language: Mi'kmaw

The picking of sweetgrass becomes an action — and word — with profound meaning in this gently mesmerizing piece by multidisciplinary writer and artist shalan joudry.