Short Films
Queer Exile 2024 | غریب عائد غریب
A personal, poetic documentary tracing the echoes of queerness and displacement across borders. In Queer Exile, Ahmed Awadalla reflects on the experience of fleeing Egypt and navigating life in Berlin. Through a blend of archival material, performance, and personal narration, the film interrogates memory, survival, and the quiet rebellions that shape lives in exile.
After fleeing Egypt in the wake of the revolution, an exiled activist arrives in Berlin, yearning for safety, reaching for breath. But before he can catch it, he’s placed in a refugee camp, steps away from far-right rallies chanting for his removal. Trapped between what he fled and where he’s landed, he must confront the cost of escape, the ache of memory, and what freedom really means.
As the director of Queer Exile, I’m honored to share the story behind a film that began as something deeply personal and has since found resonance with audiences far beyond the world of film festivals.
Displacement, mobility, and the search for belonging have shaped human lives for centuries. Within queer communities, these themes often carry an added weight. Queer Exile is a meditation on what it means to live in exile—on the emotional landscapes of rebellion, longing, and the fragile ways we try to build home when the ground beneath us is constantly shifting.
The film weaves together my own journey from Cairo to Berlin with broader questions about identity and survival. While Germany likes to imagine itself as a beacon of welcome, and Berlin as a queer sanctuary, the lived experiences of queer refugees often tell a more complicated story. Queer Exile seeks to challenge dominant refugee narratives by offering a firsthand perspective—one that hasn’t been filtered through state institutions or media intermediaries.
What started as a personal reflection has become a shared space—thanks to the conversations it’s sparked and the communities it’s reached. I’m especially grateful to the Imagining Queer Bandung project and to the filmmakers, curators, and peers who supported this film through every stage.
Thank you for being part of this ongoing journey. I hope Queer Exile moves you, unsettles you, or simply makes you feel seen.
- Winner Jury Award | USN Sardinia 2024
- Special Mention | XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin 2024
- Camera and Editing Assistance Julian Curico
- Sound Design Banu Çiçek Tülü
- Original Music Aaro, ENANA
- Poster Design Siwar Zulfiqar
- Motion Design Maksim Mau
This film is part of the Imagining Queer Bandung Project (Berlin, 2021)
Curators: Popo Fan, Ragil Huda (of ‘Queer’ Asia), and Sarnt Utamachote
Artistic Directors: Malve Lippmann, Can Sungu.
With generous support from bi'bak, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA,
Queer Asia, Fonds Soziokultur, and European Solidarity Corps.
Out of Bounds
Out of Bounds is a hybrid documentary that revisits the forgotten legacy of Glasgow’s Lock Hospital, a 19th-century institution that confined “fallen women” under the guise of public health. Part ghost story, part investigative documentary, part performance, and part cityscape, the film asks what it means to live among the ghosts of medical control—and what happens when history makes its way into the present through the body. Moving through the ruins of institutional memory, Out of Bounds traverses the contentious boundaries between science and shame, care and control, the past we inherit and the one we try to forget.
When a student moves to Glasgow to study the history of sexual shame, they expect archives and lecture halls, not footsteps in empty corridors and whispers at midnight. But their new home is haunted by a past the city has all but forgotten. A chance encounter with a woman who knows Glasgow’s buried truths reveals the building’s origins: it stands on the site of the Lock Hospital, where women deemed ‘fallen’ were confined and condemned. As the student and their unlikely ally dig deeper, they uncover not only the suffering endured there but also the unexpected heroes who once fought to expose the cruelty. Each discovery intensifies the haunting, as if restless spirits are urging them to finish what was started long ago. Only they know the truth, and together, they must bring it to light, even if it means confronting the ghosts that refuse to rest.
Alongside director and writer Awadalla, Out of Bounds is shaped by a powerful team of collaborators. Berlin-based DJ and composer Majdolen creates the film’s haunting original score, blending ambient textures with emotional resonance. Sound design is led by Banu Çiçek Tülü, a sound artist and researcher whose practice explores sonic memory and urban transformation. Cinematographer Julian Curico brings a sensitive visual approach that weaves observational realism with lyrical abstraction. Visual artist and performer Chao-Ying Rao contributes not only as an actor but also as a collaborator in crafting the film’s stylised reenactments. Set designer David Sneddon helps evoke the layered history of the Lock Hospital site, grounding the film’s theatrical elements in atmospheric detail. Together, the team animates a film that is sensorially rich, politically urgent, and formally adventurous.