Image+Nation
ABJAD HAWAZ (أبجد هوز)

ABJAD HAWAZ (أبجد هوز)

HADI MOUSSALLY | LEBANON | 2025 | 5 MIN | ARABIC EST

HADI MOUSSALLY | LEBANON | 2025 | 5 MIN | ARABIC EST

IN-CINEMAVIRTUALShortBECOMING

Subtitles: English

NOV 21 / 18:00Cinéma Public505 Rue Jean-Talon E. Montréal, QC H2R 1T6 (métro Jean-Talon)

Synopsis

Named after the ancient ordering of the Arabic alphabet, Abjad Ḥawaz embodies each letter through Salma Zahore's dancing body in the ruins of Barcelona. Fashion, music, poetry and performance reclaim a language often feared, transforming it into a celebration of identity and freedom.

Trailer

Filmmaker Bio

Hadi Moussally is a Lebanese-French filmmaker with two master's degrees in Fiction and Documentary/Anthropological Cinema from Paris. In 2015, he co-founded the production company h7o7, dedicated to creating and promoting hybrid works blending fashion, experimental, documentary, and fiction. In 2020, he launched Hybrid Wave, a collective of over 30 international hybrid artists. His bold and genre-defying films have earned him more than 60 awards and over 500 official film festival selections worldwide.

Director's Statement

Abjad Ḥawaz was born from a moment of violence hidden in the everyday. […] From this wound comes my fascination with the Arabic language itself. […] With Abjad Ḥawaz, I want to explore this paradox. To reclaim the language and its beauty. To ask: how do we build a world where people are accepted for who they are, instead of being branded and diminished by prejudice? […] Abjad Ḥawaz is both a wound and a reclamation: a film that asks what it means for language itself to become dangerous.

Producer

Hadi Moussally, Olivier Pagny

Cast

  • Salma Zahore

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