"Grandma, A Thousand Times" 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.
Teta Fatima is the 83-year old matriarch of the Kaabour family and the sharp-witted queen bee of an old Beiruti quarter. With great intimacy, the film documents her larger-than-life character as she struggles to cope with the silence of her once-buzzing house and imagines what awaits her beyond death. Meanwhile, her beloved violinist husband (deceased 20 years) is both an essential absence and presence. His features manifest through the face of their filmmaker grandson while his previously unpublished violin improvisations weave through her world and that of the film.
"Grandma, A Thousand Times" brings together grandfather, grandmother, and grandson in a playful magic-realist documentary that aims to defy a past death and a future one.
by Mahmoud Kaabour / Feature Documentary / United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Lebanon / 2010 / 48 min / Color / HDCAM
In Arabic, English / English, Arabic subtitles
Interests: About Family, Documentary, Dramedy
Rated: Suitable for all audiences