Coinciding with the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 'Your Ghosts Are Mine – Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices' brings the visions of dozens of filmmakers and video artists from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia to Venice. It includes selected films supported, co-financed or initiated by the Doha Film Institute and video works from the collections of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the future Art Mill Museum.

The exhibition presents a journey in moving images through contemporary experiences of community life and memory, transnational crossings and exile. The works span multiple genres – fiction, documentary, animation and memoir – often blending invented narrative with fact, modernity with tradition and spirituality with postcolonial sensibilities. 'Your Ghosts Are Mine' features excerpts from more than 40 works by as many directors, as well as video works by artists including Wael Shawky, who presents his 2015 work Al Araba Al Madfuna II.

The film is set in and around Al Araba Al Madfuna, a village in Upper Egypt. The starting point of the work is Shawky’s personal experiences of the villagers’ relationship with the nearby archaeological site of Abydos. Once a religious centre in pharaonic times, Abydos is now a tourist attraction and source of income for local residents. The very objects and sites that once catalysed religious endeavour are now commodities with tangible economic value. This shift between divergent strategies of endeavour – one religious and one materialistic—is also the core theme of the short story The Sunflower (1983) by Egyptian author Mohamed Mustagab (1938-2005), on which the manuscript to Shawky’s film is based.

Shawky casts child actors to play the roles of the film’s adult characters, but overdubs their dialogue with adult voices and absurdly exaggerates the costumes and scenery: the large beards are clearly fake and the robes are far too big for the slender children’s bodies. These surreal elements are further accentuated by the film being shot in negative, with bluish and violet shades casting a chimerical glow over the scenes.

With its distinctive, beautiful visuality and dialogue mimicking the tone and structure of oral legends, Al Araba Al Madfuna III is a sophisticated yet playful exploration of the relationship between the metaphysical world and the world of tangible objects.

Coinciding with the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 'Your Ghosts Are Mine – Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices' brings the visions of dozens of filmmakers and video artists from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia to Venice. It includes selected films supported, co-financed or initiated by the Doha Film Institute and video works from the collections of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the future Art Mill Museum.

The exhibition presents a journey in moving images through contemporary experiences of community life and memory, transnational crossings and exile. The works span multiple genres – fiction, documentary, animation and memoir – often blending invented narrative with fact, modernity with tradition and spirituality with postcolonial sensibilities. 'Your Ghosts Are Mine' features excerpts from more than 40 works by as many directors, as well as video works by artists including Wael Shawky, who presents his 2015 work Al Araba Al Madfuna II.

The film is set in and around Al Araba Al Madfuna, a village in Upper Egypt. The starting point of the work is Shawky’s personal experiences of the villagers’ relationship with the nearby archaeological site of Abydos. Once a religious centre in pharaonic times, Abydos is now a tourist attraction and source of income for local residents. The very objects and sites that once catalysed religious endeavour are now commodities with tangible economic value. This shift between divergent strategies of endeavour – one religious and one materialistic—is also the core theme of the short story The Sunflower (1983) by Egyptian author Mohamed Mustagab (1938-2005), on which the manuscript to Shawky’s film is based.

Shawky casts child actors to play the roles of the film’s adult characters, but overdubs their dialogue with adult voices and absurdly exaggerates the costumes and scenery: the large beards are clearly fake and the robes are far too big for the slender children’s bodies. These surreal elements are further accentuated by the film being shot in negative, with bluish and violet shades casting a chimerical glow over the scenes.

With its distinctive, beautiful visuality and dialogue mimicking the tone and structure of oral legends, Al Araba Al Madfuna III is a sophisticated yet playful exploration of the relationship between the metaphysical world and the world of tangible objects.

Coinciding with the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 'Your Ghosts Are Mine – Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices' brings the visions of dozens of filmmakers and video artists from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia to Venice. It includes selected films supported, co-financed or initiated by the Doha Film Institute and video works from the collections of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the future Art Mill Museum.

The exhibition presents a journey in moving images through contemporary experiences of community life and memory, transnational crossings and exile. The works span multiple genres – fiction, documentary, animation and memoir – often blending invented narrative with fact, modernity with tradition and spirituality with postcolonial sensibilities. 'Your Ghosts Are Mine' features excerpts from more than 40 works by as many directors, as well as video works by artists including Wael Shawky, who presents his 2015 work Al Araba Al Madfuna II.

The film is set in and around Al Araba Al Madfuna, a village in Upper Egypt. The starting point of the work is Shawky’s personal experiences of the villagers’ relationship with the nearby archaeological site of Abydos. Once a religious centre in pharaonic times, Abydos is now a tourist attraction and source of income for local residents. The very objects and sites that once catalysed religious endeavour are now commodities with tangible economic value. This shift between divergent strategies of endeavour – one religious and one materialistic—is also the core theme of the short story The Sunflower (1983) by Egyptian author Mohamed Mustagab (1938-2005), on which the manuscript to Shawky’s film is based.

Shawky casts child actors to play the roles of the film’s adult characters, but overdubs their dialogue with adult voices and absurdly exaggerates the costumes and scenery: the large beards are clearly fake and the robes are far too big for the slender children’s bodies. These surreal elements are further accentuated by the film being shot in negative, with bluish and violet shades casting a chimerical glow over the scenes.

With its distinctive, beautiful visuality and dialogue mimicking the tone and structure of oral legends, Al Araba Al Madfuna III is a sophisticated yet playful exploration of the relationship between the metaphysical world and the world of tangible objects.