Imagine me like a country of love

Imagine Me Like a Country of Love is the debut film of Yemeni-born artist Thana Faroq, an experimental documentary that explores the emotional and physical landscapes of returning to a homeland transformed by time and prolonged conflict. After leaving Yemen for the Netherlands because of the war and living there for nearly a decade, I returned to a country still fractured, unstable, and bearing the weight of devastation. Together with my mother, I recovered family photographs once thought lost in the chaos of war. This act of collective recovery forms a fragile visual thread through the film, where images of the past intertwine with the unsettled present. Blending contemporary footage from Yemen with these photographs and animation, the film unfolds as a fragmented, poetic reflection on memory, belonging, and grief. Moving like memory itself, disjointed, layered, and uncertain. It meditates on the dissonance of return and the emotional aftermath of conflict, not through visible ruins, but through what continues to remain quietly disturbed.

Director

Thana Faroq

Section

Official Competition 5 — Traces of Elsewhere

Language

Arabic, English

Writers

Thana Faroq

Producers

Thana Faroq, Ruba Al Sharki