01/07/2024 - Angie Obeid presents a spatial-temporal road trip which creates space for a father-daughter conversation while chasing ghosts in Europe and the Middle East

Yalla, Baba! [+see also:
trailer
interview: Angie Obeid
film profile], the feature-length documentary by the Lebanese director living in Brussels Angie Obeid, is screening in the National Competition of the 7th Brussels International Film Festival. This director, producer and editor first turned heads with her movies I Used to Sleep on the Rooftop (2017) and Pacific (2019). After relocating to Brussels several years ago, she felt the need to make a film, setting off on the same road trip her father embarked upon almost 40 years earlier, from Brussels to Beirut. It would prove an opportunity to re-solidify a father-daughter bond weakened by distance, to facilitate an intergenerational conversation made easier by the confined space of the car, and to look into the recent history of the areas they traversed.

In this sense, it’s both a family-focused introspection and a geopolitical exploration that Angie Obeid embarks upon, in a road movie which takes the time to visit the past as well as the lands through which it travels. As the kilometres go by, we learn more about Mansour, a former cultural journalist whose career was stymied by politics. His past also features war, or rather a succession of wars, the spectre of which hovers constantly over his country. Father and daughter exchange more or less distant memories, inspired by the geography of their journey which totals 4,000 kilometres and which see them crossing borders created or erased by conflict. They experience ghosts of the Balkans War, bullet holes in Bosnian walls, traces of the siege of Sarajevo, a certain sense of nostalgia for Communism, too, in Bulgaria, and impassable Syria, which the duo are unable to drive through at present.

Inevitably, their road takes them off course, leading them into a more intimate conversation which sees their viewpoints clash. "You help us to grow", Mansour admits to his daughter, who keeps some sort of personal video diary throughout the entire trip, which her father shares with his wife. “It’s taxing", Angie remarks. When faced with questions of an existential or more personal nature, their visions of the world differ. Religion, in particular, is a sticking point, as are romantic and marital relationships. They debate, they sometimes argue, but they always come full circle in this car-come-cocoon. Mansour also transmits a legacy, values and a heritage, a sense of belonging to the land, which comes into being once they arrive at their destination.

Making the same journey 40 years on is also an act of mourning: mourning the people encountered during that first trip, mourning a certain outlook on the world, illusions, a series of borders and ideals... But it’s also about going back in time in order to move forwards, untangling knots, listening to the ghosts of history, and embracing the past.

Yalla, Baba! Is produced by Belgian firm Savage Film.

(Translated from French)