Festivals & Awards

Silver Remi Award – WorldFest Houston, 2012
Religion Today International Film Festival, Italy, 2012
WorldFest Houton, USA – Official Competition, 2012
Jerusalem Film Festival, 2011

Demons and Madness
2011

 A secular Arab-Israeli director returns to his religious family to settle a longstanding dispute about demons and ghosts

Documentary, 80 min.
Video
Language: Hebrew/ Arabic
Subtitles: English

World Sales: http://www.ruthfilms.com

Credits

Directed by - Mamdouh Afdile
Produced by - Amir Harel, Ayelet Kait
Script by - Mamdouh Afdile

In participation with 
Lama Films, Channel 8, Gesher multicultural Film Fund

Director of Photography - Benjamin Chiram
Editor -  Mamdouh Afdile
Original Music - Hilal Zaher

Story

At nine years old I was diagnosed with a heart problem. The doctors could not provide a distinct diagnosis and ultimately decided that I must undergo surgery.

But before the scheduled surgery, my father took me out of the hospital, claiming I had already been operated on - not by doctors but by mystic entities. And the problem did indeed go away.

For my father, this incident was the first significant proof as to the existence of a hidden world, but very quickly his curiosity compelled him to learn more. In “an ignorant mistake” as he calls it, he summoned bad entities that haunted my family home for several years. The strange phenomena that my family experienced became an inexplicable secret that we carry to this day.

From a young age, I became a willing partner to my mystic father’s covert activities. My father secretly taught me what he knew of the world of mysticism and developed hopes that I would carry on for him. But fate would have it otherwise and to his dismay I abandoned the spiritual world for the world of imagination and became a filmmaker.  Perhaps by making this film I will be able to re-enter the world of demons - or my own madness.