Hanina/Homesick

Yasmin Moll

2023 / 8 minutes
United States / Egypt, United States
Fadicca Nubian, Arabic with English subtitles

Best Short Film — Honorable Mention

A young Nubian girl embarks on an animated journey back in time to reconnect with her drowned homeland. Guided by a Nile egret, she travels underwater through the lake created by the Aswan High Dam, visiting Nubia’s mountains, palm trees, water wheels, and houses, and encountering its men and women. She bids farewell to her people as they board the boats that will take them to their resettlement villages. Returning to her own time, she carries with her the strength of knowing that Nubia will always live on within her. In 1964, the lake created by the Aswan High Dam led to the largest displacement in modern Egyptian history, as Nubians were forced to leave their villages along the banks of the Nile. In the years immediately preceding the dam’s construction, hundreds of photos of “Old Nubia” were taken as part of a large-scale salvage anthropology project directed by the American University in Cairo. The animated film Hanina/Homesick reimagines these ethnographic photos as a visual accompaniment to the iconic displacement song “Wa Hanina”, written and performed by the late musician Sayed Gayer, and re-arranged and recorded for this project by his son Ahmed.