Doha Film Institute
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International Short Films Programme 1: Outer Edges
Mhamed, a Palestinian asylum seeker in Sweden, starts talking to an AI chatbot to improve his Swedish. But what begins as practice soon becomes a late-night lifeline.
After the 2023 war on Gaza, Mhamed, a Palestinian asylum seeker in Sweden, is trying to rebuild his life far from home. To improve his Swedish, he starts talking to an AI chatbot, but what begins as language practice slowly becomes a place where he shares his grief, his memories and his loneliness. Through these late-night conversations, Amani Jaafer’s film offers an intimate portrait of exile, loss and the need to be heard.

Credits

Director
Amani Jaafer
Screenwriter
Amani Jaafer
Producer
Amani Jaafer, Karim Jouini
Cinematographer
Harshad Gaikwad
Editor
Louis De Schrijver
Sound
Simon Smårs, Yazid Chebbi
Music
Noor Cherif
Cast
Saleh Bakri, Shadi Diab, Kaïs Qadri

About the Director

Amani Jaafer
Amani Jaafer is a Tunisian filmmaker based in Stockholm, with a PhD from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where she pursued an academic career in engineering and data science. Her directorial debut, ‘Je te ferai un film’ (2022), was selected by more than 30 festivals worldwide, followed by ‘A Lullaby Unlike Any Other’, made in response to the early days of the 2023 Gaza war. Her project ‘A Curio