Filmmaker and visual artist Yousreya studied and shared several multimedia art workshops from 2000 to 2004, at Helwan University. There she made her first film Similitude, an art video awarded by the Goethe Institute in Cairo at the 4th Festival for Independent Cinema. After finishing her degree in multimedia from ITI in 2006, she joined Jesuit Cairo Film School where she directed 4 short films Déjà vu - Vous ou autre chose - Fly kite - Waiting (2008-2009). After directing the 3D art video Negative (2010), she participated in several exhibitions in Egypt.Since Meditalents, her short film Exceeding Time was screened at Sewanee (the University of the South) in the United States in 2015, and, in 2017, the script of her short film Beyond the Walls was selected at Robert Bosch Stiftung at the Stuttgard Film Festival, Germany.

When an entire people allow a power to silence them, their citizens become zombies.

Born in 1985 in Morocco, Jawad, after obtaining a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Management, as well as in Cinema and Dramatic arts, was assistant director on several short and feature films, then communication and distribution manager at Alin' production.After his Meditalents Lab, while continuing to develop his feature film project after his stint at Meditalents, Jawad was director of fiction at Vidéorama, and then hired as a scriptwriter on many cinema projects and TV series.

Mehdi returns from the United States. His entire family is gathered to wait for him at the airport. They are far from discreet. His father, who has nothing to envy the Taliban, argues with his older brother, who exposes his tattoo in his face.The mother, newly divorced hardly pays attention to the fight since it has already happened and will eventually happen again. As for Osama, the younger brother, he tries to deflect the shame that people throw at him with humor and sarcasm.When Mehdi finally comes home, he has to navigate two worlds, his mother's house, a modern universe where things seem open but only in appearance. And his father's neighborhood, which he likes to refer to as Raqqa, the capital of fundamentalism.When his father pushes him to get married, Mehdi reconnects with Kate, an American ex-girlfriend of his. To marry her, he will bring her back to Morocco and try to get the family to accept his relationship. But Kate is a free spirit, bi-polar and has stopped taking her medication. She has also converted to shi'a.Both families will eventually oppose the relationship and, strangely, come together to destroy it.

Hakim was born and raised in Agadir, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, before flying to France to pursue film studies, first in BTS Audiovisual in editing, then at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière in the Cinema section, where he wrote and directed several short films.He then developed his first feature film project Forgive them for they don't know, selected at the Meditalents writing workshop in 2012, along with eleven other directors from the southern Mediterranean. He was also selected at the Socrates writing workshop (Djerba, Tunisia) to work on a new version of the project under the supervision of a Moroccan story editor.Based in Paris, Hakim works as a writing consultant on screenplays while developing several short and feature film projects including Jeld, selected at the co-production forum of the Bordeaux International Independent Film Festival.

Zak and Hind have been inseparable since childhood. In Agadir, on the Moroccan Atlantic coast, their life is sweet and their adolescence carefree. But when Hind becomes pregnant by a vacation sweetheart, they are going to have to break through the bubble they have been living in until now and cross into a country they don't know all about.

Gaya Jiji is a Syrian director born in Damascus in 1979. Holder of a master's degree in directing from the University of Paris VIII, the young woman obtained a grant from the script development fund, awarded by the Amiens festival. She has already directed several short films, which have been acclaimed by the critics. The last one, entitled Morning, noon, evening... and morning, released in 2011 and lasting 19 minutes, is touring festivals around the world.

In 2014, she is invited to the Cannes Film Festival by the Fabrique des Cinémas du Monde. She then stays in France thanks to obtaining an artistic visa. She has just spent two years in Syria, close to the war that ravages her country. Following this experience, the young woman would like to direct her first feature film. Recluse at home to be spared from bullets, she spends her time writing, strongly inspired by the dramatic environment that surrounds her. Like many other Syrians, Gaya Jiji is indeed strongly marked by the conflict. According to her, art represents the only way out, the escape that allows one to survive the horror.

In 2016, she received the Women in Motion Award from the Kering Foundation at the Cannes Film Festival. In May 2018, her film Mon Tissu Préféré was selected for the Festival Un Certain Regard in Cannes. It is in the running for the Caméra d'or.

Damascus, March 2011. The revolution begins to rumble. Nahla is a young woman of 25, torn between her desire for freedom and the hope of leaving the country thanks to an arranged marriage to Samir, a Syrian expatriate in the United States. But Samir prefers her younger sister Myriam, more docile. Nahla then gets closer to her new neighbor, Madame Jiji, who has just arrived in the building to open a brothel.

Faouzi Boudjemaï, Algerian, born in 1985, after studying at ISMAS -film school in Algiers- is pursuing a master's degree in cinema in Paris; he directed the short film Square Port Saïd in 2012, then, while continuing the development of his feature film project, directed Mirage (CM, 2014), Fa Mi Solo (Documentary, 2015), Assia (CM, 2015).

A fortnight ago, a makeshift boat, carrying 15 illegal immigrants from Algiers, trying to reach the Spanish coast at night, was caught in a storm and disappeared. Two bodies were found dead and only one survived, HAMID, spotted and boarded by the Spanish coast guard. He is back in Algeria after the Spanish authorities handed him over to the Algerian police. The other missing persons are still being sought, but without any hope of finding them alive after 15 days of the shipwreck. It is time to mourn. Hamid has returned home in a critical state. Everyone takes him for a depressed person, a traitor, a madman, a deaf-mute... In any case this shipwreck caused him a psychological shock. He tries to overcome his very affected psychological state in front of the pressures of the families of the disappeared, of the police, of his family and of the social life he was about to leave. It is the return to the point zero. Hamid is locked in a labyrinth.

Erige Sehiri is a French-Tunisian director and producer. With her production company, HENIA, she develops auteur documentaries, awarded notably at Visions du Réel, IDFA, Cinémed...In 2018, her first feature-length documentary, THE NORMAL WAY, remained in theaters in Tunisia for six weeks. In 2021, she wrote, shot and produced her first feature film, SOUS LES FIGUES, and won several post-production awards at the Venice Film Festival (Final Cut in Venice). She is then selected for the 54th Directors' Fortnight at Cannes 2022.

Tunisian railroad workers assigned to Line No. 1 nickname it THE NORMAL RAILWAY, because it is the only one built to international standards. Ironically, it is also the most neglected and deteriorated of the network. Accidents are frequent and the lives of passengers and employees are at risk. At the controls of the locomotives, Ahmed, Afef, Issam, Abee and Najib are actors and witnesses of the difficult process of transformation of the Tunisian railroads, and by extension of the post-revolutionary Tunisian society as a whole. Each of them tries as best they can to find a new place in a society struggling to create a democratic way of life for itself. By denouncing incompetence and corruption, this film celebrates dignity, hope and resilience.

Cynthia Kasparian, was born in 1985 in Beirut, Lebanon. She studied audiovisual at Saint Joseph University in Lebanon and then at the École Supérieure des Études Cinématographiques in Paris. She has written and directed four short films, three of which are fictions and one documentary. She is currently working on the development of two feature film projects, including Voies troubles.

Faced with the assault of a defenseless woman, no one reacts. Seeking justice for the victim, Layal struggles with her own cowardice facing corrupt police and the indifference of witnesses, at the cost of losing the people most dear to her.