Aida Returns
This film is a poignant, sometimes sad, sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, often absurd story of a multiple journey: the journey of loss as the director’s mother Aida struggled with losing herself to Alzheimer’s disease, but finding solace in her repeated “returning” to the Yafa and Palestine of her youth; the journey of the loss of a parent; and the ultimate return journey back to Yafa where Aida would finally find rest and be herself once more.
Close to four years after Aida’s passing away, the director’s friend and colleague Tanya who lives in Ramallah came to visit Beirut. When she heard about Aida’s wishes and yearning for Yafa, Tanya suggested that she herself carries the ashes back. The film accompanies director Carol Mansour as she engineers a way to return her mother to Yafa in search of eternal rest and peace for her. A return that is aided by an unlikely set of friends and strangers all coming together to facilitate what should have been a simple journey. This journey is at the same time very private and personal, while resonating with hundreds of thousands of Alzheimer’s sufferers and their families as well as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees awaiting their return home.
This film is a tribute to the lost past of the director’s family, an attempt to restore part of both an individual and a collective memory, and a poetic nod and affirmation to all those exiled Palestinians forbidden from returning to their hometowns, even after death.
-
Carol MansourDirector"Stitching Palestine", "We cannot go there now, my Dear", "Men on Hold", "Thank you Soma", "Not Who We Are", "It's Just Another Place", "Shattered: Beirut 6.07", "A Covid-eo Diary",
-
Muna KhalidiProducer"Stitching Palestine", "We cannot go there now, my Dear", "Men on Hold", "Thank you Soma", "Not Who We Are", "It's Just Another Place", "Shattered: Beirut 6.07", "A Covid-eo Diary"
-
Tanya HabjouqaCamera"Occupied Pleasures"
-
Carol MansourEditing"Stitching Palestine", "We cannot go there now, my Dear", "Men on Hold", "Thank you Soma", "Not Who We Are", "It's Just Another Place", "Shattered: Beirut 6.07", "A Covid-eo Diary"
-
Project Title (Original Language):عائدة (Aida)
-
Project Type:Documentary, Feature
-
Genres:Family History, Point of View
-
Runtime:1 hour 17 minutes 30 seconds
-
Completion Date:January 2, 2023
-
Production Budget:65,000 USD
-
Country of Origin:Lebanon
-
Country of Filming:Canada, Lebanon, Palestine, State of
-
Language:Arabic, English, French
-
Shooting Format:Digital, mobile phone cameras
-
Aspect Ratio:16:9
-
Film Color:Color
-
First-time Filmmaker:No
-
Student Project:No
CAROL MANSOUR
Director Biography & Filmography
Carol Mansour is an independent documentary film maker. She founded Forward Film Production in
2000 in Beirut, Lebanon. With over 25 years in documentary production, Mansour achieved international recognition and honor for her films, with over fifty film festival screenings and official selections worldwide.
Her films have been screened at several festivals in Europe and North America, winning numerous prestigious awards including most recently, the Best Short Documentary at Rated SR Festival 2021 in New York, and the Prix Spécial du Festival at the FIFOG 2021 Festival in Geneva. In 2018, Carol received the Best Documentary Award at the Delhi International Film Festival and in 2017, she received the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Boston Palestine Film Festival for “Stitching Palestine”. She was awarded the Best Documentary Award at the Al-Ard Film Festival in Sardegna, and the Women Film Critics Circle Award at Rated SR Festival 2015 in New York, for her 2014 documentary film “We cannot go there now, my Dear”. She was awarded Best Documentary at the Rated SR Festival 2014 in New York, and the Jury’s Special Mention at the FIFOG festival in Geneva for her 2013 film "Not Who We Are". Her 2006 film “A Summer Not To Forget” received Best Short International Documentary at the New Zealand Festival. She has also won the Jury’s Prize at the Institute du Monde Arab in Paris and Best Documentary at the Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam. Carol’s work reflects her concern for human rights and social justice, covering issues such as migrant workers, refugees, environmental issues, mental health, rights of the disabled, war and memory, right to health, and child labor.
Carol is Lebanese/ Canadian of Palestinian origin. She studied in Montreal, Canada, and is currently living and working from Beirut, Lebanon.
List of Documentary Film
- “Sisterhood” (2022); 36’; Migrant Domestic Workers’ solidarity in Lebanon
- “Those Still Standing” (2021); 5’; one year after the Beirut port blast
- “Shattered: Beirut 6.07” (2020); 17’; reflections on the aftermath of the Beirut port blast
- “A COVID-eo Diary” (2020); 5’; life in Beirut under COVID lockdown
- "Thank you Soma" (2018); 55’; examining the relationship between a young Lebanese woman and the migrant domestic worker who raised her
- "Men on Hold" (2018); 72’; the plight of Syrian refugee men in Lebanon
- "Stitching Palestine" (2017); 78’; twelve women share their stories of Palestine on the backdrop of
traditional embroidery
-"It’s Just Another Place" (2016), 36’; experiences of people living with Down Syndrome and their
families
- "We cannot go there now, my Dear" (2014), 42’; the double-refugee experience of Palestinians from
Syria
- "Not Who We Are" (2013), 71’; Syrian refugee women in Lebanon
- "We Want To Know" (2012), 42' ; exploring the memory of the Lebanese civil war
- "Where do I begin?" (2011), 36'; mental health in Lebanon
- "All for the Nation" (2011), 52'; examining the inability of Lebanese women to give the nationality to spouses and children
- "I Come From a Beautiful Place" (2010), 33'; Iraqi and Sudanese refugees in Lebanon
- "Maid in Lebanon II: Voices from Home" (2008), 40'; the connection of female migrant domestic workers with their home countries
- "A Summer Not to Forget" (2007), 27'; chronicling the Israeli war on Lebanon of 2006
- "Invisible Children" (2006), 26'; working children
- "Maid in Lebanon" (2005), 27'; highlighting the plight of female migrant domestic workers
- "100% Asphalt" (2002), 26'; street children of Cairo
I have been making documentary films for more than 15 years. The core of my work is on issues of human rights and social justice. Being the daughter of Palestinian parents, both of whom came to Lebanon as refugees in 1948, I grew up with stories of the Nakba. As I grew older, the stories of displacement and dispossession I heard as a child became a political and social reality which framed my life, for the Nakba is one of the one of the paramount injustices of the twentieth century that is persisting into our present time.
Aida, my Palestinian/ Yafan mother, passed away three years ago at the age of 86, four years after having been diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. Fearing losing her to the disease, I found myself filming her every time I visited the family in Montreal. At the time, filming her was a purely personal project, with no plans of ever turning it into a film. In retrospect I now see that filming her was probably my way of holding on to the essence of the “real” Aida.
When she passed away, I brought her ashes back to Lebanon, hoping to one day spread them in Yafa where she always dreamt of returning. Until one day, totally unexpectedly, a friend of mine was able to take Aida with her to Ramallah and Jerusalem, and from there to Yafa to be laid to rest in her father's home and to be engulfed by the seas of Yafa. She and I have documented every part of this journey of return.