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Aida Returns

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This film is a poignant, sometimes sad, sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, often absurd story of a multiple journey: the journey of loss as the director's mother Aida struggled with losing herself to Alzheimer's disease, but finding solace in her repeated "returning" to the Yafa and Palestine of her youth; the journey of the loss of a parent; and the ultimate return journey back to Yafa where Aida would finally find rest and be herself once more. Close to four years after Aida's passing away, the director's friend and colleague Tanya who lives in Ramallah came to visit Beirut. When she heard about Aida's wishes and yearning for Yafa, Tanya suggested that she herself carries the ashes back. The film accompanies director Carol Mansour as she engineers a way to return her mother to Yafa in search of eternal rest and peace for her. A return that is aided by an unlikely set of friends and strangers all coming together to facilitate what should have been a simple journey. This journey is at the same time very private and personal, while resonating with hundreds of thousands of Alzheimer's sufferers and their families as well as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees awaiting their return home. This film is a tribute to the lost past of the director's family, an attempt to restore part of both an individual and a collective memory, a poetic nod and affirmation, and a call to action to all exiled Palestinians to defy the structures forbidding from returning to their homes, even after death.

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Peter Keough Arts Fuse There is humor and sorrow, but the depth of the historical tragedy and its often forgotten human cost is ever present. Mar 4, 2025 Full Review Read all reviews
Aida Returns

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Movie Info

Synopsis This film is a poignant, sometimes sad, sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, often absurd story of a multiple journey: the journey of loss as the director's mother Aida struggled with losing herself to Alzheimer's disease, but finding solace in her repeated "returning" to the Yafa and Palestine of her youth; the journey of the loss of a parent; and the ultimate return journey back to Yafa where Aida would finally find rest and be herself once more. Close to four years after Aida's passing away, the director's friend and colleague Tanya who lives in Ramallah came to visit Beirut. When she heard about Aida's wishes and yearning for Yafa, Tanya suggested that she herself carries the ashes back. The film accompanies director Carol Mansour as she engineers a way to return her mother to Yafa in search of eternal rest and peace for her. A return that is aided by an unlikely set of friends and strangers all coming together to facilitate what should have been a simple journey. This journey is at the same time very private and personal, while resonating with hundreds of thousands of Alzheimer's sufferers and their families as well as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees awaiting their return home. This film is a tribute to the lost past of the director's family, an attempt to restore part of both an individual and a collective memory, a poetic nod and affirmation, and a call to action to all exiled Palestinians to defy the structures forbidding from returning to their homes, even after death.
Director
Carol Mansour
Producer
Muna Khalidi
Production Co
Forward Film Production
Genre
Documentary
Original Language
Arabic
Runtime
1h 12m