Synopsis
Vida Dena’s feature documentary debut is an intimate and subtly expansive portrait of a Syrian family living in a house in Brussels that seldom leaves the confines of its four pink walls. MY PAPER LIFE focuses on the two eldest daughters, Hala and Rima, and the family’s growing collection of drawings and dreams. As their colourful sketches come alive, the young women recall their journey and their home, their plans to study and to marry, and what other possibilities they hope this new life might have in store.
Director's Biography
Vida Dena (1984, Tehran) is an Iranian female artist and independent filmmaker who is currently living in Brussels, Belgium. She got her bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Azad Art and Architecture University in Tehran. In the summer of 2009 she left for Sweden to continue her master’s degree in Fine Arts in Umeå Academy of Fine Arts. She also obtained a master in Film at KASK Ghent, Belgium in 2015. She is currently working as an artist in Brussels, where she draws, paints and curates exhibitions and cultural events and gives workshops to children, teenagers and newcomers. She is also part of the audiovisual collective called “Ciclope”, as well as the collective “Comment peut-on être persan?”. Her film “Ayan et le Ballon Blanc” (2015) premiered at the 58th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. Her first feature documentary “My Paper Life” premieres at Visions du Réel 2022.
