Mond
Suspenseful drama about an Austrian martial arts trainer hired by a Jordanian businessman to give his daughters resilience training. However, she soon discovers that the stone-rich family is hiding something.
Suspenseful drama about an Austrian martial arts trainer hired by a Jordanian businessman to give his daughters resilience training. However, she soon discovers that the very wealthy family is hiding something.
After arriving in Jordan, former Mixed Martial Arts fighter Sarah soon discovers she’s been hired on a pretext. What initially sounded like a dream job soon becomes unsettling: the young women are cut off from the outside world and under constant surveillance. The sport doesn’t seem to interest them. By the time she understands the precarious situation she’s walked into, it’s too late to leave.
Writer and director Kurdwin Ayub was born in Iraq, but her family fled to Austria when she was a baby. With Mond, she aims to provoke and reflect on stereotypes surrounding refugees and the role of the ‘white saviour’. It is therefore both a personal story and a political thriller about constrained women's rights. The film had its world premiere in the competition of the Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize and the Europa Cinemas Label (an award of a jury of exhibitors from the Europa Cinemas network).