'mosaic'

About

The regions of South-West Asia and North Africa have birthed a new generation of youth living across the globe. Whatever the term, and wherever we are, we find ourselves questioning our identities as South West Asia / North Africa (SWANA) descendants.

Using interviews, crowdsourced footage and original music, ‘mosaic’ is a short film co-directed by Layla Madanat and Eleanor Nawal, with original sound by Sofie K. and visual design by Jeremy Rieder. ‘mosaic’ explores the young people of the SWANA+ diaspora's relationship to identity and home, bringing together fragments of lives to tell a new story.

In a time when our stories continue to be told for us and at us, ‘mosaic’ is both a decolonising of old narratives, and an exploration of new ones, giving young people in the SWANA+ diaspora the power to shape their narrative. Hear how SWANA+ diasporic youth from across the world experience life from gender and sexuality to food and language, as clips of their own audio and visuals serve, like a mosaic, as elements painting a bigger picture.

 Through verbatim audio combined with footage shot by interviewees themselves, contrasted with archival footage shot by colonisers across the twentieth-century, we allow SWANA+ youth to tell their stories through their own voices. What results is ‘mosaic’, sometimes unexpected, sometimes obvious, but never simple.

‘mosaic’ - فسيفساء  is fully subtitled in both English and Arabic.