Don't Get Too Comfortable (لا ترتاح كثيرًا)
Qumra Projects
/ Short Experimental / Yemen, United Arab Emirates, United States of America, Netherlands, Qatar / 2022
In Arabic, English, Swahili
Rated: This film has not been rated.
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Synopsis
When Shaima Al-Tamimi’s paternal grandfather migrated from Yemen to Zanzibar half a century ago to find work, little did he know that migration would continue as a pattern for later generations of his family. Having lived through a deadly revolution in the early 1960s powered by British colonialism, he fled back to Yemen with members of the family, including Shaima’s father. Fast forward 55 years and five countries later, she is a member of a generation of Yemenis who have grown up confused, marginalised and deprived of opportunities to thrive due to the limitations of being a Yemeni passport holder even while living outside their homeland. ‘Don’t Get Too Comfortable’ fuses archival images, found footage, parallax animation and sound design to create a multimedia letter to the director’s paternal grandfather, reflecting on the migration and resettlement of her family following his death over fifty years ago. Family photos, archival materials, and self-portraits by the director place the viewer in-between time and space, calling attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being, felt by Yemeni migrants and their descendants. This introspection attempts to heal intergenerational trauma, creating space for a new and more nuanced narrative of Yemeni migration.