Dégradé
DFI Cinema - Doha Film Institute
Arab Nasser, Tarzan Nasser / Palestine, France, Qatar / 2015 / 84 min / Colour / DCP / In Arabic, Russian / English subtitles
Themes: Comedy, Drama, Social Issues, Women
Rated: 
Mature subject matter. May not be suitable for minors. Individuals under the age of 15 are not admitted into cinemas
Description
A hot summer's day in the Gaza Strip. Today the electricity is on. Christine’s beauty salon is heaving with female clients: a bitter divorcée, a religious woman, a lunatic addicted to prescription drugs, a young bride-to-be accompanied by her asthmatic mother and her quarrelsome mother-in-law, and a very pregnant woman, among others. But their day of leisure is disrupted when gunfire breaks out across the street.
A gangland family has stolen the lion from Gaza’s only zoo, and Hamas police forces have decided it’s time to settle old scores. Stuck in the salon, with the prospect of death drawing ever nearer, the women start to unravel. How will the day end? Will they lose their lives for the sake of ‘liberating the lion’?
Director
Arab Nasser
Filmmakers and identical twin brothers Tarzan and Arab were born in Gaza in 1988. In 2010, they received the A.M. Qattan Foundation's prestigious Young Artist of the Year Award for their conceptual artwork ‘Gazawood’, a series of mock-Hollywood posters for imaginary feature films named after real Israeli military offensives on Gaza. That same year, they directed the short film ‘Colourful Journey’, which had its premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. ‘Dégradé’ is their first feature-length film.
Tarzan Nasser
Filmmakers and identical twin brothers Tarzan and Arab were born in Gaza in 1988. In 2010, they received the A.M. Qattan Foundation's prestigious Young Artist of the Year Award for their conceptual artwork ‘Gazawood’, a series of mock-Hollywood posters for imaginary feature films named after real Israeli military offensives on Gaza. That same year, they directed the short film ‘Colourful Journey’, which had its premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. ‘Dégradé’ is their first feature-length film.
Credits
- Screenwriter
- Arab Nasser, Tarzan Nasser
- Producer
- Rani Massalha, Rashid Abdelhamid, Marie Legrand
- Cinematographer
- Éric Devin
- Editor
- Sophie Reine, Eyas Salman
- Cast
- Hiam Abbass, Manal Awad, Mirna Sakhla, Victoria Balitska