Private Project

Mother Yemen

Camcorder footage shot on the streets of Sanaa, intimate audio cassettes recorded during a civil war, vintage family photographs from decades past, crackly recordings of Islamic sermons, and contemporary Arabic folk music: this fractured, diasporic dreamscape paints a portrait of the filmmaker’s mother, who left her homeland of Yemen for America in 1989.

  • Ahmed Qaid
    Director
  • Ahmed Qaid
    Editor
  • Ahmed Qaid
    Producer
  • Bijan Sharifi
    Sound Designer and Re-Recording Mixer
  • Layle Om
    Composer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    11 minutes 31 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Yemen
  • Language:
    Arabic
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Ahmed Qaid

Ahmed Qaid is a Yemeni American writer, filmmaker, and photographer whose works explore the experiences of Arab and Muslim individuals within contemporary America. He was recently selected for the Stowe Story Labs Launch program.

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Director Statement

In 1989, my mother immigrated from Yemen to America, leaving behind her mother and three younger siblings. For the next decade, she and her family communicated through audio cassettes sent back and forth across the ocean. In 2006, my mother returned to Yemen for the first time since 1989 and found it entirely different from the homeland of her youth. Through my grandmother’s voice and my mother’s memories, I attempt to bring to life the diasporic longing for a homeland so distant in time and space that it’s become nothing more than a faint, dreamy echo.