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MUSSA

By Anat GOREN

CINEPHIL - as SALES All rights, World

Documentary - Completed 2014

Mussa is a 12 year old African refugee. He studies, a sole African child, in a Tel Aviv's upscale neighborhood. His Israeli classmates are his best friends. He reads and writes Hebrew, but for five years he’s been communicating only through gestures and facial expressions. He connects via social net

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    • Year of production
    • 2014
    • Genres
    • Documentary
    • Countries
    • ISRAEL
    • Languages
    • ARABIC, ENGLISH, HEBREW
    • Budget
    • 0.3 - 0.6 M$
    • Duration
    • 60 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Anat GOREN
    • Producer(s)
    • Daniela RACHMINOV SIDI, Anat GOREN (Drucker & Goren Media)
    • Synopsis
    • Musa is a 12-year-old African refugee. He lives with his parents in a tiny apartment in the worst neighborhood of Tel Aviv, and studies, a sole African child, in the city's most upscale neighborhood.
      His Israeli classmates are his best friends. He plays soccer, reads and writes Hebrew, but for five years, he communicates only through gestures and facial expressions. He gets angry, screams and cries without a voice. Only his laughter can be heard.
      He connects with his friends through social networks, but he will not speak, and no one knows why.
      "Yes, they know how to clean", say some of his classmates during a discussion on refugees and foreign workers," but they will multiply and take over our country".
      When Mussa gets off the school bus, he hurries home as he goes by the junkies and whores, dodging the policeman. He's spending the afternoons all by himself in his tiny apartment watching TV, jumping on the bed or just waiting for the day to be over.
      In several hours, his mother will come home from work. She came to Israel to give her son a better life, but she cannot afford to take him to a movie or to the mall.
      Musa's teacher, Anna, emigrated from Russia 14 years ago. She buys him clothes and school supplies. She helps him with his homework, but has never heard his voice. Only at night in her dreams does she hear him speak. From the moment Anna arrived, Mussa's mother left him under her wings. While Mussa apparently reflects a successful attempt to help and integrate the weak with the strong, we still ask ourselves why does he choose to remain silent for six years? And why does he refuse to speak their language and insists on remaining different. What lays behind his tough choice to do so?
      Mussa's point of view will be there throughout the events that occur in his life: the deportation of some of his friends, the unjust arrest of his father,or the crucial moment in which he realizes his life is about to change forever when his mother is told she has to leave the country in one week, leaving him devastated as he's forced to choose between one of his parents.
      This is a film about the gap between black and white, between rich and poor. It's about strangeness and connection. It's a movie about the choice to be quiet, and communication without words. It's about the inability of a child to bridge the gap between two parallel different worlds, and a society that tries to maintain a clear conscience.
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