Festival Aflam | Al Ahwar (Les Marais)

Editorial

What can cinema do in an Arab world shaken by wars of erasure and governed by the law of the strongest, in contempt of international law and populations? It can bring people together, break isolation, create encounters between filmmakers and audiences, and thus offer a space in which to pick up the threads, revisit history and stories, and repair memories and images.

This is the meaning of this edition of the festival, which is part of Saison Méditerranée 2026. Aflam is taking part in the momentum launched last May by contributing to the circulation of works, narratives and imaginaries. The 2026 festival will also be an opportunity to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Vive archives series, Aflam’s annual program highlighting this cinematic heritage since 2021. The 2026 edition will focus particularly on questions of memory, the preservation of archives and the transmission of collective histories through cinema.

Festival Aflam – 13th edition

Al Ahwar (Les Marais)

by Kassem Hawal | 1977 | Iraq | 44 min | World premiere of the restored version

For more than seven thousand years, the marsh region has culturally extended Sumerian civilization. The largest ecosystem of its kind in the Middle East and Western Asia, it covers two-thirds of southern Iraq. In 1975, filmmaker Kassem Hawal shot a 45-minute documentary there, writing the screenplay and directing it. But in 1985, the Iraqi regime began draining the marshes, causing a human, cultural and ecological catastrophe: the forced exodus of tens of thousands of inhabitants, pollution of the air, water and soil, and the disappearance of countless species. The film’s original reels were burned, but Kassem found a copy, which he immediately wanted to share with the world.

The film is being presented for the first time in its restored version. Accompanied by a presentation of Ayed Nabaa’s film project, Why Do We Plant Roses?

Preceded by:

Archive Katsakh – Holy Cruise: Damascus, Baalbek

Date unknown | 3 min

The “Katsakh: Mediterranean Archives” project is a personal collection of nonfiction films shot with Super 8 mm and 16 mm cameras in cities and villages of the eastern Mediterranean between the 1920s and 1970s. This collection aims to capture the diversity of life and culture in the region, serving as a rich historical archive that invites viewers to connect with our past.

Practical information

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The festival screenings