On Trials
Spring Grants 2016 - Production Stage
Jasmina Metwaly, Philip Rizk / Feature Experimental or Essay / Egypt, Qatar / 2017 / 75 min / Original Language: Arabic / Interests: Creative Documentary
Synopsis
The enacted. The robe. The absurd. Failed precedents. ‘On Trials’ is a film about realms of law that people encounter on a daily basis. In Egypt¨ the legal system is a labyrinth of enactments carried out by appointed actors. Judges in their robes. Lawyers wearing suits. Prisoners in white, blue and orange. Guards in dark uniforms guarding the courts. Cameramen taking quick shots of the ongoing performance. Tailors never running out of business. ‘On Trials’ is a work-in-progress that visits different threads of what makes up this realm of the law.
Credits
- Director
- Jasmina Metwaly, Philip Rizk
- Screenwriter
- Jasmina Metwaly, Philip Rizk
- Producer
- Philip Rizk
- Production Company
- Seen Films
About the Director
Born to an Egyptian father and a Polish mother, Jasmina Metwaly is a Cairo-based artist and filmmaker, and member of the Mosireen collective. She works in video and film, and has recently started drawing again. She likes to work with people and their histories, texts, archives, images, scripts and drawings. She is interested in how stories create stories, and how they leave the space of one reality and enter another, intertwining the boundaries of both. Rooted in performance and theatre, her works focus on process-based practices that have a social function that generates tension between participants and audiences.
Philip Rizk is a filmmaker and writer based in Cairo. Together with Jasmina Metwaly, he directed the feature film ‘Out on the Street’ (2015), which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and was part of the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Rizk is a member of the Mosireen video collective. His texts have appeared online, in journals and in collected volumes, including ‘Uncommon Grounds – New Media and Critical Practices in the Middle East and North Africa’ (IB Tauris, 2014). In November, 2015, Rizk’s audio installation ‘A Colonial Landscape’ accompanied Tobias Zielony’s photography exhibition of the same name at Fotohof, Salzburg. He is currently working with Metwaly on a new project entitled ‘On Trials’.