Mon père s'appelle Abdul / Leila Albayaty

Mon père s'appelle Abdul / Leila Albayaty

docu-fiction, feature length

Mon père s'appelle Abdul portrays an encounter between Western and Arab cultures through the story of a French-Iraqi family. 

Abdul was a co-founder of the Ba'ath party in Iraq. Threatened by the Iraqi authorities, he had to leave the country. In 1970, he met Simone in Paris, where they fell in love and started a family. He never returned to Iraq, but since a couple of years they spend half their time in Egypt and the other half in France. Their eldest daughter, Leila, became a musician and filmmaker and starts to film her family in 2001. Several years later, she feels the need to come back to her Arabic heritage after rejecting it for most of her life.

She decides to try to learn the language and the culture with the help of her father, and through the lyrics he writes for her. This in turn gives him the opportunity to speak about tragedies in Iraq.

The film witnesses the fractures of an exiled family who, in spite of everything, still believes in hope and freedom.

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CREW
Written and Directed by: Leila Albayaty
Production: Michel Balagué, François-Pierre Clavel (Kidam, FR)
Funding: Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (DE), Doha Film Fund (QA)
With the kind support of: Forecast Platform, Künstlerinnenförderung Berlin