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Documentary blending fiction, animation and archive footage tells the unlikely story of Palestinian cartoonist Bashir Meraish. After an attack in 1983, he and his father, a freedom fighter, were pronounced dead.
The documentary by the Palestinian Mahmoud Al Massad, who lives in the Netherlands, seems a classic example of the motto ‘you can’t make up reality’. Anyway, the unlikely life story of the charismatic Jordanian Bashir Meraish was priceless to the filmmaker. As a four-year-old kid, Bashir sat in a car beside his father, a prominent PLO fighter, in Athens in 1983, when the Mossad eliminated his dad. Bashir was also hit by the bullets and initially pronounced dead. In this documentary, merging fiction, animation and archive footage, the now grown-up Bashir tries to visualise the man his father was. What is the current state of affairs regarding the Palestinian issue? And is the pen more powerful than the sword? After all, Bashir chose not to follow in his father’s footsteps, but to contribute to the fight for independence as a political cartoonist.


Title: This Is My Picture When I Was Dead
Year: 2010
Duration : 1 hour, 23 minutes
Category: Long Documentary
Edition: NFF 2011

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