The festival concluded its activities at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) with two films in French. The first, a documentary titled Without Kosovo and the second, a Swiss production titled Columbine. The closing ceremony was attended by Fuad Morina, Kosovo ambassador and Florence Tinguely Mattli, Switzerland ambassador in Doha.
Ambassador Fuad Morina welcomed the attendees during a speech on the occasion, and stressed that the cultural festival celebrates Francophonie, praising the role that culture plays in uniting people and creating spaces of solidarity and mutual understanding.
Ambassador Florence Tinguely Mattli, welcomed the participants during the cultural evening of the Doha Francophone Film Festival and all friends of Francophonie.
She also thanked the MIA in Doha for providing everyone with the opportunity to host the festival for a whole week, which allowed for the presentation of a rich and diverse collection of Francophone cinematic productions. She also stressed that each work takes the viewer on a tragic and heroic path, but it is always an emotionally touching film that calls for progress and reflection.
The film Without Kosovo by director Dea Djenovici, produced in 2017, tells the story of the young Aslan Djenovici. It is about a physics student at the University of Pristina, who participated in organising student demonstrations demanding the independence of Kosovo in 1968, and which forces him to flee his country due to repression of activists by the Serbian authorities at the time. The film also tells the story of the young man’s escape journey through Balkan countries and Italy, where he was detained at refugee camps for more than three years, before he finally settled in Switzerland. The young man had been away from his family for more than thirty years before deciding to return to his homeland in 2016.
The second film, Columbine, directed by Dominique Othenin-Girard was produced in 2022. It tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who runs away from home due to a troublesome relationship and quarrels with her mother, in order to search for her father she has never met. Her search takes her through time and she finds herself in the middle of a huge live show during a winegrowers’ festival, and is dazzled by the surreal setting and is trapped in a strange world where she can rely only on her intelligence and her heart to find her way.
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