The Tower

Eleven-year-old Wardi lives with her family in a Palestinian refugee camp near Beirut. One day, her great-grandfather Sidi, one of the first residents of the camp after the expulsion in 1948, gives her the key to his old house in Galilee. This comes as a shock to Wardi: does this mean that Sidi has given up his dream of returning and has lost all hope? In search of Sidi's lost hope, she collects stories about her family spanning four generations. In search of answers, she embarks on a journey through her family's stories, interviewing uncles, aunts, and neighbors, discovering not only Sidi's personal fate, but also the collective history of a people. Generation after generation, it becomes clear how closely personal hope is interwoven with political powerlessness. Norwegian director Mats Grorud, who himself worked in Camp Burj el Barajneh, brings a unique animation project to the screen with THE TOWER: the story is told through detailed stop-motion scenes in the present and drawn 2D flashbacks. This visual dichotomy creates a moving narrative structure in which past and present, dream and reality flow into one another. THE TOWER was shown at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2018, was nominated for the European Film Award in the “Best Animated Film” category, and won awards in Chicago, Giffoni, and Tokyo.