Abo Zabaal Prison 1989
Egypt
Bassam Mortada
Abo Zabaal 1989 is a hybrid autobiographical documentary of Bassam, the director and his journey as he shares how he deals with the trauma he and his family carry with them. Abo Zabaal is a well-known political prison in the region. Thousands of political prisoners have gone in and came out with traumas. One of them is Mahmoud Mortada, Bassam’s father. At 5 year old Bassam has engraved in his mind the morning his mother woke him up to help her prepare a huge amount of fish and take it to his father in Abo Zabaal prison. The effects of the events that happened in 1989 had consequences on the whole family. Bassam witnessed, heard and felt events beyond his capacity to comprehend. For Bassam's father, he comes out a changed man and leaves the family after a short time to live in Vienna. His mother Fardous's view is that he abandoned them and she suffers unrecognised trauma and disappointment with the father while she carries the burden of her current illness. As a mother, she did not have the luxury to break down like he did. She did not have the privilege of just leaving. Between these two narratives lies Bassam’s own trauma and alienation from his parents. Bassam grew up judging his father while feeling responsible for making up for his actions towards his mother. As he grew older the more empathy he feels for his father the more guilt towards his mother. He shares his attempts to restore his relationship with them and liberate himself from the past by documenting his journey of reconnection with the past. On the one hand he reaches out to his parents by spending time, visiting places from their past and listening to them revisit their memories. On the other hand he immerses himself in an experience in which he recreates visions, flashbacks and subjective memories from the past. He also puts himself in his fathers shoes as a prisoner trying to connect with his fathers past. Bassam does the recreations in 16 MM film in an experimental distorted manner giving the film a visual language and feel that is different than the present. The immersive experience also includes listening to audio tapes his father used to send him when he left them to vienna. They listened together for the first time in 25 years. Bassam’s journey to reconnect is interrupted when his mother passes away. He and his father attempt to deal with the past by visiting places from the past. They visit a deserted village that is coincidently named Fardous. Bassam’s father believes this is where they can start a new path. Then together with the Egyptian actor Sayed Regab, who was imprisoned with Mahmoud in 1989, Bassam stages a unique private performance to give a home to these painful memories. For the first time Sayed Ragab presents a dramatic monologue he had written about his experiences in Abo Zabaal and the context they lived in at that time. In the audience are only Bassam and his father.