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United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Lebanon · 2011
50m
Director Mahmoud Kaabour
Starring Al Hajjeh Fatima
Genre Documentary, Family
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Teta Kaabour is an 83-year old family matriarch and sharp-witted queen bee of an old Beiruti quarter. She’s been gripped as of late by the silence of her once-buzzing household. Resigned to Argileh smoking and coffee binging on a barren balcony, Teta starts to meditate upon what awaits her beyond this lifetime.
She might not be our kin, but filmmaker Mahmoud Kaabour's anecdotal, warm-humored tribute to his grandmother - and, to a limited extent, to her cultural heritage - taps into the universal desire to hang onto loved ones in their waning years.
Director Mahmoud Kaabour is Fatima's grandson, and she instantly seizes on--lightly, in her way--the guilt and panic that's inspired him to make this film.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Warmhearted and defiantly unsentimental, Grandma, a Thousand Times gains lightness from Teta's tart observations.
A delightfully inventive valentine to his 83-year-old Lebanese grandmother, Mahmoud Kaabour's Grandma, a Thousand Times tenderly deconstructs the family-portrait genre, investing all manner of postmodernist distancing devices with emotional resonance.
Throughout time they have hunted each other fulfilling the prophecy, that there can be only one.
It's a brand new beginning in the adventure that never ends