Yemeni-Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq had no idea that a brief trip home would be the start of a profound journey into a story larger than her own. Bayt Al-Toot (The Mulberry House) documents her re-discovery of a country struggling to find its own identity.
Revisiting her childhood house in Yemen after many years, she films her family’s relationships and through her lens redefines her place in her society stirred by revolution. What began “as a personal quest for me”, she says, grew until it was “no longer just my story.”
2.5 years in the making, the film portrays family love as it unfolds in many forms, felt strongly when the family would all gather and pick mulberries. In it, an old mulberry tree in her grandfather’s garden stands as “a symbol for continuity” in its cycle of shedding leaves and bearing fruit.
Screened this month at the Dubai International Film Festival, Bayt Al-Toot has added to Ishaq’s acclaim; her previous film Karama Has No Walls was nominated for an Oscar.
For more info – Bayt Al Toot (The Mulberry House)
