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  • Old Child
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  • Availability worldwide
  • Language Arabic
  • Subtitles English, French, Italian

In solidarity with the Palestinian people, yanco will donate its part of the income made through transactional video on demand sales of Old Child to UNRWA, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

part of
double bill #21

Old Child

Elettra Bisogno, Hazem Alqaddi, Belgium, Palestine, 2019, 16’
Cinéma du Réel

2020

DocLisboa

2020

Old Child depicts the fragmented story of Hazem, who had to flee Gaza. Throughout this stream-of-consciousness montage of dreams and reminiscences, he searches for order but also for the beauty he left behind.

Bio Elettra Bisogno

Born in Italy in 1993, Elettra Bisogno grew up in various European cities. After studying graphic design in Italy, where she specializes in experimental printmaking, she moves to Brussels and instinctively turns to the moving image. She draws inspiration and forges herself from watching and listening to the world, in its beauty and its injustice. Graduating in 2021 from KASK & Conservatorium in the film programme, she emerges as a documentary filmmaker with two short films: Ultima Cassa (2018) and Old Child (2020). She is now working with Mohanad Yaqubi on the research project, Aesthetics of Transnational Solidarity, at KASK & Conservatorium.

Bio Hazem Alqaddi

Hazem Alqaddi (1998) graduated from the UNRWA Schools in Gaza and arrived in Belgium in 2018, eager for a new life outside of occupied Palestine. He is a passionate rollerblader, kitemaker, chef, and storyteller. He discovered filmmaking in 2019 when he co-directed Old Child (2020) and has been recording with commitment ever since to express what’s on his mind. His feature debut, made together with Elettra Bisogno,The Roller, The Life, The Fight, premiered in 2024.
Old Child (Elettra Bisogno & Hazem Alqaddi, 2019)
Old Child (Elettra Bisogno & Hazem Alqaddi, 2019)
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Flickering Memories

Elettra Bisogno & Hazem Alqaddi’s Old Child

Savina Petkova
10.05.2025
essay

For a refugee or an immigrant, memories of a prior life are not simply broken; they are snapped in two, three, four, or more pieces and doomed to exist separately. These split memories can emit a particular shine, as attested by Elettra Bisogno and Hazem Alqaddi’s short Old Child. The film dwells in the paradox of its title, where old age and childhood are readily coupled, as if there were no time or space in between these two ends of a human life spectrum. Of course, the title also holds melancholy, which is only one feeling in the vast emotional landscape of Old Child.

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Old Child (Elettra Bisogno en Hazem Alqaddi, 2019)
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Rolschaatsen als verzet

Elettra Bisogno en Hazem Alqaddi’s Old Child

Yousra Benfquih
26.10.2024
artikel

In Old Child van Elettra Bisogno en Hazem Alqaddi schetsen droomachtige, onscherpe beelden de herinneringen van Hazem, die uit Gaza migreerde naar België. Halverwege de kortfilm, wanneer hij steile trappen af dendert, leren we dat Hazem een rolschaatser is. Meer dan een moment van kinderlijke vreugde middenin een stroom van complexere beelden en traumatische herinneringen die voor Hazem’s geestesoog verschijnen, symboliseert het rolschaatsen een verlangen naar beweging — in sterk contrast met de beperkingen op de bewegingsvrijheid van de Palestijnen in de context van hun koloniale bezetting.

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Credits

Cast
Hazem Alqaddi
Camera
Elettra Bisogno, Hazem Alqaddi
Editor
Elettra Bisogno
Sound
Elettra Bisogno, Hazem Alqaddi
Music
Ali Zeitoune, Fausto Romitelli
Producer
Geoffrey Devolder
Production
Tahin Productions
351
experimental documentary drama portrait

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A Letter to Mohamed

Christine Moderbacher, Belgium, Tunisia, Austria, 2013, 35’

This is a cinematic letter to the title character, who left Tunisia and now lives in Belgium. Shot in the first year after the Tunisian revolution, this is a poetic journey through a troubled landscape. Between order and chaos, the film reveals a land of disillusionment but also of humour and hope.

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Magic, a portrait of Joris

Chloë Delanghe, Belgium, 2018, 15’

In Magic, a portrait of Joris, images sourced from different periods in time are glued together. Worn-out VHS footage filmed by the artist’s father is placed beside 8mm images she filmed herself. Both have the same subject: one boy, both a son and a brother. Connecting images of then and now, a new narrative of remembering opens up.

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Akaboum

Manon Vila, France, 2019, 30’

A portrait of contemporary suburban youth seeking to invent new contours of collective identity, against the backdrop of France in the throes of recession.

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On Its Way Down

Sebastian Schaevers, Belgium, 2022, 22’

Zinal, a small town in the Swiss Alps, looks straight up toward the melting glaciers of the Couronne Impériale. The townspeople struggle with nihilistic indifference. When the threat is so immediate, and their powerlessness so great, can their response be anything other than cynicism? Then a paraglider falls mysteriously from the sky, and Zinal starts to change.

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Waithood

Louisiana Mees-Fongang, Belgium, 2019, 21’

In Athens, five youngsters avoid waiting for an empty future by seeking entertainment in the luxurious Airbnb establishments that one of them is cleaning for a meagre fee.

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Expires in 2 days
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We Began by Measuring Distance

Basma al-Sharif, Egypt, 2009, 19’

Long still frames, text, and sound are woven together to unfold the narrative of an anonymous group that fills its time by plotting distances. Innocent measurements give way to political ones, examining how image and sound communicate history.

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Swollen Stigma

Sarah Pucill, United Kingdom, 1998, 21’

Swollen Stigma is a visual, surrealistic narrative about a woman travelling both literally and psychically through several rooms. Memories, or fantasies, of another woman, fill her imagination. The film proposes lesbian imagery, and its shifting points of view jump between the protagonist, fantasy spaces, and her lover, making an internal world leak into what is external.

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I Don’t Feel At Home Anywhere Anymore

Viv Li, Belgium, China, 2020, 16’

A wistful but witty account of a trip to Beijing by filmmaker Viv Li, a Chinese art student who has been living abroad for ten years. Her stay with her family mercilessly exposes how uprooted she has become by her life abroad.

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