We follow the director's camera into the kitchens and living rooms of a community of Moroccan women. inside the walls of their apartment in Casablanca's old Medina, the women cook, clean, take care of their families and help each other. With their hands in the dough, in the soap whilst washing the laundry, doing the house chores, in the market or at the hammam, between laughter and tears ("We are housewives, that's all. ... Our sport? House cleaning!"). These courageous women, proud of their role, talk about their miserable lives with a great sense of awareness, but without self-pity. They show a surprising vitality, curiosity for life and solidarity. These house-proud housewives may not all know how to read, but they know exactly what would improve their lives: equal rights for women and men, more money, and a better future for their children so they wouldn't have to emigrate to support the family. A sense of hope and the possibility of change radiate out of the everyday lives of these heroines ("batalett").

At the dawn of the 21st century, a man named Gharsallah passes away and is burried in the mausoleum of a small village called Dhibet in the centre of Tunisia. A saint, a righteous man, a madman or someone possessed' He lives on in the memories, the tales and the dreams of an entire region.

June 2005, the forest of Benyounes in Morocco, 2 km from the fence that separates Ceuta from Morocco. As happens every week, we come across African citizens who are hoping that here they will find an opportunity to cross into Spanish territory, into Europe. Two people from our collective meet with our working group and we talk about many things that worry and affect us. After sharing our stories, we decide to make a documentary that will show the realities that we experience in Morocco as a country of transit.

This highly kinetic tableaux of uprooted sights and sounds works most earnestly to expose the racial biases concealed in familiar images. Relying on valuable snippets from feature films such as Exodus, Lawrence of Arabia, Black Sunday, Little Drummer Girls, and network news shows, the filmmakers have constructed an oddly wry narrative, mimicking the history of Mid East politics.

In Benyounes forest, “la foret” as they called their habitants, was the last stage of a long trip for thousands of people coming from Sub-Saharan Africa. Close to the fence that divides Ceuta (Spain) from Morocco, they establish in a variable time, before flank the last obstacle in they way to Europe, looking for a better life. Sometimes running away from wars, politics persecutions, hunger or a precarious economy situation. Lots of times of all of this. In years, the migrants pass across this forest and after some weeks or months they manage to arrive to Ceuta. In finals of 2004, European union start agreements of subcontract Morocco in the control of the Spanish – Moroccan border. The habitants of the forest, started to feel the effects of this agreements: the increase of illegal devolutions, the abuses from the civil police, they install police controls near the forest, they forbid the access to current water, military attacks to the camps in with they made mass arrests and rapes as a war weapon. The border it's close. Systematic violation of human rights, financed with the tax of the democratic European Union citizens. The migrants organize themselves in spaces like this and construct spaces; support nets in Moroccan territory, confronting and resisting this way the European politics. In the forest of Benyounes, they organized themselves from origin communities. In February of 2005, decided between all the community's, record this video, to made visible their situation, in with they report the systematic violation of their human rights, the absolutely abandonment from the NGO's, Associations an Human Rights Institutions, an they demand their citizens condition and they require their rights as human beings.

In the industrial suburbs of Beirut, three men talk about their sexual relationships: beginning, middle and end, hiding nothing. The video explores the ideal "male" that attracts them and they share with most boys his age. The cult of the body, songs and sexual language are verbal and non-verbal elements articulate their fantasies. The stories they tell us begin with the seduction, and end when they have fucked. This is the image they want to project in front of the camera, the "brave and beguiling" guy. In this context, desire is a commodity and romantic relationships always lead to failure.

Map compilation: The Palestine-Israel area. The Ottoman Empire. Ottoman provinces in the Middle East. Jewish and Arabic towns in Palestine under the Ottoman Empire. The Middle East divided up between France and Great Britain. The Palestine – Transjordan division. The UN partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. A Map of the main aquifers in the area. Jewish and Arab towns in Palestine before the partition decreed by the UN. The creation of the State of Israel. Maps of the area after successive wars and crises. The Israeli control matrix of the territory. Map of Greater Jerusalem reclaimed by the state of Israel. Those under Palestine autonomy acknowledged by Israel. Annexations by the wall.  

Above all, Mast Qalandar (Ecstasy) is a look at heterodoxy and a celebration of its existence. Qalandars are a Sufi brotherhood of roaming dervishes who once ranged through an arch that crossed Asia, from Turkey to Pakistan and India. They are characterized by extreme mystical devotion and their revolutionary and anti-dogmatic attitudes within Islam, such as use of hachis and the rejection of alcohol and free submission to Haqq, the truth, which they see as the absence of limits rather than something which narrows and defines horizons. “Mast Qalandar” immerses us in the ritual encounter of these dervishes around the grave of the brotherhood's founder in Pakistan. A vision of heir devotion to “the beloved” that leads them into trance and ecstasy, where death means simply to “draw aside a veil”. Available online until December 27th 2020.