“hold on to her” by Robin Vanbesien
2022 · color · CZ · 15’ · In competition
Mawda Shawri, two years old in 2018, sister of Hama, daughter of Phrast and Shamden, was shot dead by a Belgian police officer during a migration border control on a Belgian central highway.
In 2023, over 40 people, both undocumented and documented resident activists, assembled before the camera at La Voix des sans papiers in Brussels to stage a collective hearing of documents from and reactions to Mawda’s case.
In this collective hearing, the speakers acknowledge a ghostly haunting caused by police impunity and the state’s lack of accountability. In their rejection of such a lack of truth and human rights, they feel the need to explore beyond the official narratives. Together they are producing the forensic counter-evidence to Mawda’s deadly Channel crossing.
This collective hearing is supported by Vanbesien’s audiovisual grammar, which foregrounds the opaque and the poetic. Given the inability to proceed within the dominant frameworks and the urge to imagine other possible worlds, this collective hearing challenges what is visible and audible. The film moves back and forth between the collective hearing and the scene of the crime. This dialogue is imaginary: the inner world of the collective hearing is projected onto a landscape that is at once haunting and mournful.
The Director | Robin Vanbesien
A visual artist, PhD candidate and filmmaker, Robin Vanbesien (1979) explores modes of embodied knowledge and collective imagination engaged in social and political struggles. He collaborates with situated emancipatory grassroots movements, exploring cinema as a space for social gathering and political engagement. In 2020, Vanbesien co-founded The Post Film Collective, which explores cinema as a form of speculative rehearsal and communal assembly. ‘Under These Words (Solidarity Athens 2016)’ (2017) and ‘the wasp and the weather’ (2019) premiered at transmediale and Cinéma du Réel. His first feature ‘hold on to her’ had its world premiere at Berlinale Forum Expanded (2024).
Credits
with Aïsta Bah, Marcus Bergner, Thierno Dia, Henriette Essami-Khaullot, Mirra Markhaeva, Lázara Rosell Albear, Ahmed Rzgar, Naomi van Kleef, Khaled Zead
writer and director Robin Vanbesien
producers Steven Doedt, Robin Vanbesien
director of photography Diren Agbaba
additional photography Robin Vanbesien
editor Robin Vanbesien
sound designer Boris Debackere
re-recording mixer Thomas Ferrando
colorist Lennert De Taeye
graphic designer Goda Budvytyte
in collaboration with La Voix des sans papiers de Bruxelles
a production by VISUALANTICS a co-production with timely supported by Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), Tax Shelter measure of the Belgian Federal Government through Flanders Tax Shelter, Flemish Community Commission(VGC), Atelier Graphoui, Kunstencentrum Viernulvier, Sint Lucas Antwerp Research Group (SLARG), Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA)
Country of production: BELGIUM
Year of production: 2024
Duration: 80 min.
Language and subtitles: Kurdish, French, English, Dutch
Colour or black and white: Colour
