Film & Theatre

A Drowning Man by Mahdi Fleifel

OΖΟΝ returns back to the international awarded director Mahdi Fleifel for his latest movie A Drowning Man. On February 2017 OZON had interviewed Mahdi Fleifel as he presented for the first time in Athens three films invited by the curatorial team Sunday Narratives in Mikrokosmos cinema.

We are very excited to see that the Athens International Film-Opening Nights selected
A Drowning Man, the latest film of Mahdi Fleifel for two screenings:

A Drowning Man, Short Stories B – Odeon Opera 1|Friday 22/9 @17:15
A Drowning Man, Short Stories B – Odeon Opera 2|Tuesday 26/9 @ 17.30

The film follows a young man during his journey to escape his own reality in an attempt to start a new life. The journey is long and tough, difficult and disappointing, while he tries to find a kind of utopia he falls in dystopian conditions. He escaped from an exile and now he is trapped to a new one. But the oxymoron is that he lives this exile now in a free country. The young man realizes that freedom is a right for the few and a high privilege for the non-privileged citizens.

Mahdi Fleifel is a Danish-Palestinian film director who In 2010 he set up the London-based production company Nakba FilmWorks with Irish producer Patrick Campbell. His debut feature, A World Not Ours (2012), premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and picked up over 30 awards, including the Peace Film Prize at the 2013 Berlinale and the Edinburgh, Yamagata and DOC:NYC Grand Jury Prizes.

In 2016 he won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale with A Man Returned. His recent film, A Drowning Man, was selected for the official competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.

Words by: Katerina Nikou