SFF-Photo Farag

U.S. Premiere
Every day Israelis walk by what was once a photography empire in Tel Aviv, at the corner of Dizengoff and Arlozorov, a place that remains engraved in the collective memory as the epitome of family and wedding photos, but few know the story behind it. Director Kobi Farag goes on a journey to discover his family’s history. Digging into private archives, he reveals the story of ten brothers and sisters who immigrated from Baghdad in the 1950’s and climbed the ladder of success from the transit camps to lives of luxury. He tries to solve the enigma of the painful disintegration of his family.

Short film prior:
El Hara (Tunisia, France, 2016), 16 min., French w/ English Subtitles
Los Angeles Premiere
For more than 700 years, thousands of Jews lived in the Islamic city of Tunis. Most of them lived in a ‘city within a city,’ a neighborhood called the “Hara”. One conflicted young boy who grew up in the Hara recognized how the French colonial power was impacting his community — and his sense of self. This boy grew up to become the most celebrated Tunisian writer of the twentieth century, a contemporary of French philosophers Jean Sarte and Albert Camus. His name is Albert Memmi.
Memmi left the Hara as a young adult; but the Hara never left him. Through a cinematic journey of the Hara today, punctuated by an exclusive interview with Memmi and readings of his lyrical prose, El Hara explores how the places we come from shape who we become.