Morning Circle
Southeast Asian Premiere
Basma al-Sharif Canada, UAE 2025 21 min PG
For the displaced, even the smallest gestures of care and intimacy are suffused with the regulating force of colonial pedagogy.
As a father prepares his son for school, bureaucratic processes and private rituals converge. Each echoes the same demand to conform, with the final familial and community separation being formalised by the gentle yet subtly regimented rituals of kindergarten education.
Within the framework of a residency interview but crystallised in the seemingly ordinary domestic rituals of a father and son, the idea of the model assimilated immigrant is reproduced, revealing the ways in which state regulation infiltrates daily life. In its brevity, the film is less a narrative than a critique of how migrant lives and diasporic memory are disciplined into citizenship, and the quiet violence of being taught how to belong.
Synopsis Writer: Vicki Yang
Q&A with Filmmaker(s)
30 Nov, Sun 2:00PM / 92 min
Oldham Theatre
AT THE FEST!
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Morning Circle
Morgenkreis
Basma al-Sharif
Canada, UAE
2025
Arabic, Armenian, German
English
21 min
PG
Southeast Asian Premiere
Basma al-Sharif
Basma al-Sharif is an artist and filmmaker of Palestinian origin. She confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works. Her films include Home Movies Gaza (2013), Ouroboros (2017) and Capital (2023), and have been screened at Locarno, FIDMarseille and Rotterdam, among others. Morning Circle premiered at Toronto.
Panos Aprahamian,
Mohamad Ali,
Fadi AbdelShafi,
The Vega Foundation,
The Sharjah Art Foundation
