The film is directed by Majid Al-Romaihi (Doha Film Institute).
Majid Al-Rumaihi’s Qatari film ‘Then They Burn the Sea’ qualified for the Oscar race, becoming the first Qatari film to be nominated for these international awards. The short documentary was produced previously Doha Film Institute.
The film is a poetic visual treatise on love and loss experienced by the director through his mother’s gradual loss of memory, and is the first Qatari film to be screened in Festival Locarno Film Festival 2021. It also won the Best Short Film Award at the Vienna Short Film Festival and the Silver Tanit at the Carthage Film Festival, and was shortlisted for the IDA Documentary Awards.
Al-Rumaihi said, “Seven years ago, I started to feel a big gulf between my mother and me, as she was suffering from a disease Alzheimers Which made her lose the sense of existence. At 19 there was no definite way for me to live with this ongoing and gradual loss, what you stole from me and what you keep stealing from the future and the past that can’t be recovered. But cinema, and this film in particular, helped me gather the ambiguous narratives and endless dialogues resulting from my need for signs of mourning and healing”.
He added: “I am proud that my mother’s love letter is so appreciated because it is an important and essential part of my life and honors the many contributions of skilled experts and collaborators who have helped to complete this work.”
Al-Rumaihi will attend a screening of the film as part of the “Competitors in Short Films” program at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on November 14, 2022.
Al-Rumaihi dropped out of film studies at Middlebury College in his senior year to care for his mother, and was trained and mentored by Academy Award-nominated director Reethi Pan.
