Meet the artists: Halaqat audiovisual residency

Get to know the six motivated professional filmmakers who will participate in the Halaqat audiovisual residency in 2022 at Atelier Graphoui and Cinemaximiliaan.

Six motivated filmmakers from the Arab diaspora based in Belgium were selected for the Halaqat audiovisual residency launched by the Goethe-Institut and Bozar – Centre for Fine Arts Brussels together with Atelier Graphoui, Cinemaximiliaan and Sound Image Culture - SIC. During the whole year 2022, they will work on their project, meet and get coached.

Asaad Al-Hilali - Project 'Zero'

Born in Baghdad 1960, Asaad Al-Hilali graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts - Cinema in 1986. During his film studies he shot six documentaries for Babel Company. He worked in television, wrote and directed several television series and did a lot of reportages in Europe for Arab TV, as well as reports in Europe for Syria TV. In Iraq, he worked at the Ministry of Culture, in the department of Cinema and Theater, as a film director and directed several documentaries and a feature film. He is currently working as a cameraman in Liege since three years, and keep on making videos for COF, an organisation interested in making different formats. Asaad is also a writer who has published 12 books (novels and short stories), scripts for many TV series and shows and for short films.

Zohra Benhammou & Romy Mana - Project 'Ana w yek' (work in progress)

Romy Mana (1994) and Zohra Benhammou (1994) are a filmmaker duo who live and work in Brussels. They both graduated in different fields. They share a love for film, personal histories and an interest in the complexity of the different social and cultural realities which can inhabit and define bodies in modern society. A shared interest evolved in writing and making films together. Romy and Zohra are currently working on a short documentary film, ana w yek, a mid length documentary film, Entre deux and a short film, Cabane.

Louay Dabous - Project 'Once upon a time in Damascus Two cities, two personalities'

Louay Dabous came from Syria in the summer 2015. 6 years later he graduated with a master in Audiovisual art from Ritcs art school. He has been questioning the society around him all the time and moving to a new society triggered more questions in him about our life as a society and our relationships as human beings. Making documentary films about these topics is his way to combine his love for literature and poetry and to understand our lives and try to find answers.

Patrick Tass – Project 'Dear Mother'

Patrick Tass is a Belgian director of Palestinian origin born in Beirut in 1992. He completed degrees in directing at ALBA (Lebanon) and scriptwriting at the ULB (Belgium). Today, he lives in Brussels, working in the world of cinema. He teaches cinema analysis and scriptwriting courses at various Belgian cinema labs. He is a script doctor at Jay Dreams LLC. He has also worked in editing, casting and content development. He is currently directing two short films and cowriting a feature-film. In his works, Patrick focuses on themes such as identities and sexualities.

Rebecca Tawk

Rebecca Tawk is a Lebanese documentary filmmaker based in Brussels. She moved to Europe in 2017 to pursue her career as a filmmaker. Moving away from the fast routine in Lebanon; she joined Docnomads the mobile masters in documentary filmmaking based Lisbon, Budapest and Brussels, in which during, she wrote and directed 4 short documentaries. What stands out in Rebecca's films, is her participative style; She builds up a relationship with the character she is filming, and this relationship evolves into something beautiful, bringing different stories together by the end of the film, and the audience witnesses this transformation. Besides documentaries, she has also written and directed one fiction short film and a music video just before she moved to Europe. For her, life is the greatest scenario.

This audiovisual residency programme is part of the project Halaqat organised by the Goethe-Institut together with Bozar - Centre for Fine Arts Brussels and co-funded by the European Union.