To celebrate our upcoming spring screening tour, we are releasing another short excerpt from the film! Enjoy this scene in which Mama Agatha is over the moon as her students make progress in the third week of her cycling course.
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Hello friends! Some more fantastic news – right after wrapping up the unforgettable 31st Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Mama Agatha is returning back to Europe with two upcoming festival screenings – in competition at the 31st European Film Festival in gorgeous Lille, France (March 11-18) and the equally marvelous Atlantic setting of the 16th Lanzarote International Film Festival (April 4-16)! Make sure to keep these two in your calendar if you’re in the area or have friends who are around.
We have some more news to kick off another year of mobility and documentary cinema, and this one is a biggie: Mama Agatha is making an entry to the U.S. West Coast with a screening at the very prestigious, Academy Award-nominating 31st Santa Barbara International Film Festival. From Wednesday, February 3 until Saturday, February 13, 2016, you’ll have a chance to see a selection of the best and most groundbreaking work in current cinema, participate in community events and educational programs for all ages and meet celebrities really close to the epicenter of world filmmaking: Hollywood!
If you are nearby next month, make sure to take some time to catch a screening of Mama Agatha and other fantastic movies, or recommend it to your friends in the area!
Another event we are super excited about is the Bike Film Night at Cinemateket theatre in Oslo, Norway on Wednesday, 20 January! Mama Agatha is one of the highlights of this evening hosted by FutureBuilt and Klimafestivalen which brings together film and cycling. Following a recent screening in Sweden, we are very excited to see the responses to our short film in Scandinavia! See the Facebook event (with a description in Norwegian) here.
A very happy 2016! Did you have a good start into the new year? We are all kinds of delighted and honored to start this year with Louise Bawtree’s recent review of Mama Agatha. Louise is Associate Producer at Quandary Productions and saw the film at Aesthetica Film Festival in York a few weeks ago:
What is most striking about the film, besides it being beautifully shot and full to the brim with life, is the character of Mama Agatha herself. Her vulnerability and pain, hidden behind her selfless actions. A woman who has dedicated her life to community, seeking no reward. We get used to documentary being about politics, handled like a thriller and usually about revealing secrets, even simply about passing on information, we sometimes forget that they can be more profound by focussing on the everyday. This was one of the best short films I saw this year and I encourage all to check it out.
We also encourage you to check out Mama Agatha if you get a chance at a film festival or cycling event near you, or suggest to your local cycling organization to get in touch with us about organizing a screening. Read the full review here.
One of the biggest Dutch newspapers, Het Parool, just published another interview with filmmaker Fadi Hindash and reporter Liza van Lonkhuyzen. If you read Dutch, do have a look!
Sarah Goodyear from CityLab, a news source dedicated to the people who are creating the cities of the future, just published a splendid interview with Fadi, the director of Mama Agatha about cycling, migration and hope.
“Normally, most stories about immigration tend to focus on the suffering, which I believe is fair since that is a reality, but my intention was to make a film about someone who was able to turn their suffering and loss into something positive. I believe hope is very important because without it, what is the point of living, whether you are a migrant or not.”
Just in time for our upcoming screening at Cambridge Film Festival and Aesthetica Short Film Festival in the UK, the cyxling industry daily info portal BikeBiz.com is featuring Mama Agatha!
To celebrate our festival selections, we are releasing a new bonus scene. This time it’s something very special: a deleted scene which did not have a place in the narrative of the film, but still reveals so much about who Mama Agatha is as a person. Watch as Mama Agatha tries yet again to find out why she can’t start her cycling classes with a prayer. Let us know what you think of this scene in the comments!
Another fantastic piece of news just in: Mama Agatha is part of the official selection of Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York, UK. We are very much looking forward to the festival, which takes place November 5-8.