Bassam Mortada was five years old when he first visited his father Mahmoud in the notorious Abo Zaabal prison. With the police raid still fresh in his mind, his experience was dominated by incomprehension. But in the years that followed, resentment took hold. Bassam was raised by his mother Fardous, a socialist activist herself. As a single parent, her life was hard, and when Mahmoud was finally released from prison he seemed like a different person. He left for Vienna, and for a second time she was left behind, this time embittered. Bassam grew alienated from both, suppressing his own trauma and confusion. In this documentary, he films his efforts to renew and restore relationships with his parents and find a path to historical truth, emotional comprehension and psychological healing, as he tries to reconstruct how his parents' political activism has shaped their family. Through conversations with his parents and their friends, the cassette tapes his father sent from Vienna, a theatrical monologue by his father's best friend, newspaper archives and found footage, he shows the impact of the "big" history of Egypt on the "small" history of his family.

Cast & Crew
Producers: Kesmat Elsayed, Anke Petersen
Director: Bassam Mortada
Script: Bassam Mortada
Director of Photography: Maged Nader
Production Design: Salma Sabry
Music: Rami Abadeer, Omar El Abd
Sound: Daniel Wulf
Editing: Ahmad Abo el Fadl
Production: Seera Filmx, See Media Ptoduction,Joyti Film

Bassam Mortada
Bassam Mortada is a director, producer and activist.  He studied independent filmmaking at the Jesuite Cairo Cinema School. As an independent filmmaker, Mortada worked with a number of independent institutions, NGOs, activists, to help document their life, struggle and work.   In 2008, Mortada joined Al-Masry Media Corporation as a creative producer and director, where he helped set up the first independent Web-documentary TV in Egypt. He trained many journalists and managed to create a team of young video journalists, who broke grounds in the area of video journalism and produced many stories that went viral. His first feature documentary Reporting… a Revolution, in 2012 was about these journalists. It premiered in the Berlin IFF 2012 and toured many festivals worldwide. Mortada then moved to start his own independent production See Media Production with producers Kesmat El Sayed to focus on developing his creative feature documentary Abo Zaabal 89 and support others. Since then, he has directed three short documentaries, one of which, Waiting for his Descent, won the First Prize for Documentary at the Jesuite FF, and Searching for Ghazala, which premiered at the Cairo IFF. 

Filmography
Reporting․․․ a Revolution (doc., 2012), Waiting for His Descent (doc., 2015), Searching for Ghazala (doc., 2019), Abo Zaabal 89 (doc., 2024).