Synopse
The Iranian artist Mitra has lived for years in exile and can at last begin to make her dream come true: a film about her idol, the legendary Arabian singer Oum Kulthum. She wants above all to examine the sacrifices that Kulthum had to make for her success in a conservative, patriarchal Muslim society. But the shoot runs into trouble. Mitra's teenage son disappears, the film-maker is confronted with resistance to her as a woman and a non-Arab – and the legend of the singer begins to look like an almost insurmountable obstacle. As a film in film, Looking for Oum Kulthum portrays two artists having to assert themselves in a world dominated by men.
Regie
SHIRIN NESHAT (*1957) is an Iranian-American artist, photographer and film-maker. After Women without Men (2009) Looking for Oum Kulthum is her second feature.
Info
Original Title: Looking for Oum Kulthum
International Title: Looking for Oum Kulthum
Category: Feature
Section: Freihafen
Version & Subtitles: Arabic, Farsi, English OV with German subtitles
Director: Shirin Neshat
Screenplay: Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari
Cast/Protagonists: Neda Rahmanian, Yasmin Raeis, Mehdi Moinzadeh, Kais Nashif
Production country: Italy, Germany, Lebanon, Austria, Qatar
Year of Production: 2017
Length: 92 min
Producer: Roman Paul, Gerhard Meixner, Bruno Wagner, Martin Gschlacht, Antonin Svoboda, Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari
Production company: Razor Film Produktion GmbH, coop99 filmproduktion, In Between Art Film, Vivo Film srl, Schortcut Films, Doha Film Institute (DFI)
Cinematography: Martin Gschlacht
Editor: Nadia Ben Rachid
Music: Amine Bouhafa
Production Design: Erwin Prib
World Sales: The Match Factory GmbH
Distributor: Christoph Ott, NFP marketing & distribution GmbH
