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PARADISE! PARADISE!

PARADIES! PARADIES!

By Kurdwin AYUB

SIXPACKFILM - as SALES All rights, World

Documentary - Completed 2016

Vienna, Austria. A doctor´s office, two young men, patients; the doctor introduces his daughter, Kurdwin, who is planning a reportage on him and Kurdistan. Thus begins a complex, soft melodrama with home video moments: a family and its transnational economizing of feelings in the interaction with powerful militant conflicts.

Festivals
& Awards

BAFICI (Buenos Aires) 2016

Int'l Official Selection

- Year of production
- 2016
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- AUSTRIA
- Languages
- GERMAN, ENGLISH, ARABIC
- Budget
- N/A
- Duration
- 78 mn
- Director(s)
- Kurdwin AYUB
- ISAN
- 0000-0004-8CA1-0000-W-0000-0000-F
- Producer(s)
- Rudolf TAKACS, Lixi FRANK
- Synopsis
- Vienna, Austria. A doctor´s office, two young men, patients; the doctor introduces his daughter, Kurdwin, who is planning a reportage on him and Kurdistan. Thus begins a complex, soft melodrama with home video moments: a family and its transnational economizing of feelings in the interaction with powerful militant conflicts.
  Packing a blue, hardcover suitcase at night. In the bedroom, a figure mumbles under the bedcovers: "How long have we been married?"
  
  The nearly empty plane with the filming daughter and radiant father lands in Erbil, capital of the Independent Kurdish Region in northern Iraq: A city that has experienced an unparalleled real-estate boom in recent years and is sometimes compared with Dubai. Father Omar, who has lived with his family in Austria since 1991, plans to buy an apartment in Kurdistan as an investment, if even as retirement home. This is neither controversial within the family nor is it really successful. The director films the fragile plans as a critical and occasionally ironic witness, with a precise gaze at investment landscapes and interiors, as well as gender and family constellations. The father often intervenes, posing himself as emotional and proud Kurdish patriot, rife with abysmal practical optimism. The children of the host family—aunt, uncle, and cousins—reenact frivolous home music videos with the director or wild ISIS free dancing. Family tensions escalate. As it becomes clearer that the apartment purchase has its perils, the military conflicts appear ever closer and more cogent. Omar now takes photos of the grenade shots, with renewed vigor equips himself and a small unit of Peschmerga soldiers with uniforms, and then father and daughter visit the close-by ISIS front. Back at home in Vienna, Omar plays the song of the lovers´ migration and sings along.
  
  (Madeleine Bernstorff)

PARADISE! PARADISE!

PARADIES! PARADIES!

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards