Abo Zabaal Prison 1989

In search of understanding and healing, filmmaker and activist Bassam Mortada explores his father Mahmoud’s arrest, imprisonment and torture in 1989 at the infamous Abo Zabaal prison, re-constructing and reconsidering the experience that traumatized and divided his family. Soon after release, Mahmoud left his family and country, making a new life in Vienna from which he would occasionally send cassette recordings to his wife and young son in Egypt. Bassam, a child of 5 in 1989, was raised by his mother, Fardous, a socialist activist herself, who made no secret of her anger and disappointment.