TRACING ADDAI
TRACING ADDAI
Trailer
"For Addai, whom I miss (1992-2013)": the young man was like a little brother for the director. He radicalized himself and joined a Salafist groupation, although his family wasn’t religious at all. He died in the process. The mother meets Ilias, a dropout from such a groupation, who met Addai in Syria. In normal life, they would have become friends – in Syria, they became comrades until Addai simply just disappeared. Director Esther Niemeier puts the mother's statements, her letters and Addai's answers together in an animated documentary film, combining documentary material with re-enactments. Ilias is therefore played an actor.
The result is a poetic collage, a process of grieving like a jigsaw puzzle, which shows in very vivid and profound way why the Islamic state is so attractive to many young people and what bitter disappointment awaits them on the ground in Syria. WMH
DCP | Farbe / Colour
Esther Niemeier, Sarah-Christin Peter, Britta Strampe
Omri Aloni
Alexandra Praet
Robert Pilgram
Kais Setti, Benito Bause
rbb
Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
Cristina Marx
Marlene -Dietrich-Allee 11
14482 Potsdam
Germany
+49 331 62 02 564
c.marx@filmuniversitaet.de
www.filmuniversitaet.de
Esther Niemeier - born in 1981. After studying directing at the University of the Arts London, she completed postgraduate studies in Latin American Studies. Since 2015 she has been studying documentary film direction at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. TRACING ADDAI is her graduation film. She lives and works as a director and producer in Germany and the United Kingdom.
WALZ (2007, doc, short)
SIMULANT (2016, short)