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Talking About Trees

 Original Name: Banc D'attente
English Name: Talking About Trees
Year:2019
Run Time: 93’
Language:Arabic/ English/ Russian
Type (Colour/ Black & White):Colour
Country:France / Sudan / Germany / Chad / Qatar
Director:SuhaibGasmelbari
Producer: Marie Balducchi
Cast:Suleiman Ibrahim, Ibrahim Shaddad
Screenplay:SuhaibGasmelbari 
Cinematographer:SuhaibGasmelbari
Editor: Nelly Quettier, Gladys Joujou
Sound Designer:Elsadig Kamal, Katharina von Schroeder
Music Composer:
Costume Designer:   
Production Designer:
Production Company:AGAT Films &Cie
World Sales: Wide House
World Sales Phone:+33 7 70 07 64 04
World Sales Email:ma@widemanagement.com

Festivals:

• Berlin IFF 2019 
• BFI London FF 2019
• Istanbul IFF 2019 
• IDF Amsterdam 2019
• Tallinn Black Nights FF 2019

Selected Filmography:

• 2019Talking About Trees
• 2012 Ode to My Feet (Short)

Director’s Biography:

SuhaibGasmelbari was born in Sudan in 1979, he lived there until the age of 16. He studied film at the Université Paris 8 in France and worked as a freelance cameraman and editor for Al Qarra, Al Jazeera and France 24. He has written and directed many short fiction films and documentaries. Talking About Trees is his first feature-length documentary. During his research into Sudanese audio-visual archives he found some films believed to have been lost and actively participated in national and international projects to save and digitise them.

Synopsis:

Suliman and three further members of the ‘Sudanese Film Club’ have decided to revive an old cinema. They are united not only by their love of cinema and their passionate desire to restore old film stock and draw attention to Sudanese film history once more, but also by the fact that they have all enjoyed a film education in exile. Tirelessly, they try to get the cinema’s owners on their side and make the place operational again. In the meantime, they sit together and talk about the past – including their experiences of persecution and even torture as oppositional artists. They also read out old letters written while in exile and dream of a Sudan in which art and intellectual thought can be free. It is in laconic moments such as these that the viewer is able to perceive the friendship, as well as the bond and ideological solidarity that exists in the struggle for common ideals.