Concrete Land Insights
Tickets
On sale viff.org
About
North American Premiere
The Najar family lives on the outer edge of Amman, Jordan, where luxury villas are closing in on the grazing space they have long called home. In Concrete Land, Jordan-born Palestinian filmmaker Asmahan Bkerat tells the story of one of Jordan’s last Afro-Palestinian-Bedouin families as development presses closer. At the centre of this three-generation family is 10-year-old Eman, growing up among meals, songs, arguments, labour, and the family’s care for Badrya, their beloved sheep.
Bkerat spent eight years filming, and she visited the family almost every day, documenting their daily lives in the face of erasure. There are no interviews to tell us what to think; the family’s presence is felt through their daily habits, and the film’s power comes from refusing to turn their displacement into spectacle. Premiering at Locarno Critics’ Week, Concrete Land brings urban encroachment down to one home, where Eman and her family fight to remain familiar to themselves as the world around them changes shape.
Content Considerations: Animal Death (not animal cruelty), racism, classism, school bullying of Eman (one of the main subjects of the doc), intergenerational displacement, forced migration
Media Partner
The Najar family lives on the outer edge of Amman, Jordan, where luxury villas are closing in on the grazing space they have long called home. In Concrete Land, Jordan-born Palestinian filmmaker Asmahan Bkerat tells the story of one of Jordan’s last Afro-Palestinian-Bedouin families as development presses closer. At the centre of this three-generation family is 10-year-old Eman, growing up among meals, songs, arguments, labour, and the family’s care for Badrya, their beloved sheep.
Bkerat spent eight years filming, and she visited the family almost every day, documenting their daily lives in the face of erasure. There are no interviews to tell us what to think; the family’s presence is felt through their daily habits, and the film’s power comes from refusing to turn their displacement into spectacle. Premiering at Locarno Critics’ Week, Concrete Land brings urban encroachment down to one home, where Eman and her family fight to remain familiar to themselves as the world around them changes shape.
Content Considerations: Animal Death (not animal cruelty), racism, classism, school bullying of Eman (one of the main subjects of the doc), intergenerational displacement, forced migration
Media Partner
