Moosa Lane
Director: Anita Mathal Hopland
Denmark, Pakistan, 2022, 86 min
Shooting Format:16mm, HD
Festival Year:2023
Category:Documentary Feature
WINNER: Best Original Score
Crew:Writer: Anita Mathal Hopland. Producer: Sara Stockmann.
Email:sara@sonntagpictures.com
Synopsis
Over the course of 15 years, Anita Mathal Hopland documents her intimate encounters with her Pakistani family of 25 living under the same roof in the neighborhood Moosa Lane in Karachi on camera.
The film is a personal account of life as a child of several cultures and worlds. It is also an account of living out your dreams, of privileges and of family.
Anita Mathal Hopland grew up in Denmark with her Pakistani father and Norwegian mother. At the age of 25, she decides to examine her Pakistani family through the lens of her camera. Through numerous and lengthy stays with her family in Pakistan, Anita Mathal Hopland becomes closer and closer to her own generation in Pakistan. This leads to a preoccupation with the imprints our cultural and national origins leave on us as individuals, as well as how the opportunities given to us by our place of birth impact the lives we end up living.
Alongside the director, we gain insight into what it means to be suspended between two cultures. Anita is a ‘third culture kid’, which gives her a vantage point into two distinct worlds: Pakistan and Denmark.
Trailer
About the director
Anita Mathal Hopland was born in 1981 in Copenhagen. She was educated as a documentary director at the Danish Film School in 2011 with her final film UNDERNEATH THE DARK. Since her film school days, Anita has directed, filmed and edited films for the Danish Red Cross Organization, as well as other organizations and businesses. She directed the successful documentary series HALLØJ PÅ HOTELLET on DR1 in 2015. Anita’s latest film, ON THE EDGE OF FREEDOM, which she co-directed with Jens Lengerke, premiered at CPH:DOX in 2017 in the Nordic:Dox Award competition, as well as Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017 and the TV-channel DR3. The film was nominated for the Danish award TV-PRISEN (The TV Prize) in 2018. Additionally, the film has competed in several international documentary film festivals, such as ArtDoc Fest in Moscow, Al-Jazeera Balkan, and most recently the Dumbo Film Festival in New York, where Hopland also participated in the festival’s jury the following year.
Hopland was photographer and assistant director on the documentary THE LOST WARRIOR, which premiered at CPH:DOX in 2018. She has also photographed and acted as co-editor on the DR2 documentary YALLA, STEM DIG IND I KAMPEN in June 2019.