Atlas Close-Ups
ROAD TRIP
Synopsis
Khammar is a 72-year-old garage owner in Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of Lyon. His garage is his home—and his family, too. Customers and friends mingle here, visiting as much for coffee as for repairs. It is time for Khammar to retire, but he is resisting. Khammar is my father, whom I met again after 30 years apart. Little by little, we have warmed up to each other. When I asked him to come with me to Morocco, our country of origin, he accepted. He hasn’t been there for 20 years and wanted to sell the flat he owns in Casablanca to buy a house in the south of France. And I want to see the village of my family which disappeared, submerged by the largest Moroccan dam.
SaNoSi Productions (France)
Jean-Marie Gigon
jean-marie.gigon@sanosiproductions.com
Abel Aflam (Morocco)
Jean-David Lefebvre
jeandavid@abelaflam.com
Director’s statement
Part buddy-movie, part family investigation, Road Trip invites the viewer into the heart of a relationship. It’s a father-daughter relationship in which everything has yet to be invented; at a point where both stand at turning points in our lives. Khammar is looking for his new place in this world. And through him, I am trying to understand where I come from. As much a geographical journey as an inner one, the film examines transmission, memory and exile beyond absence and separation. It is as well a portrait of an ambivalent, provocative man, damaged by prison.
Biographies
Linda Qibaa is a French-Moroccan filmmaker based between Paris and Marseille. She studied photography, philosophy and finally anthropology at the EHESS. She has gained a wealth of experience working in studios, in production and regularly runs workshops on image education. She often collaborate with various artists (plasticians to chorergraphers) - as a videographer. She is currently developing her first feature- length creative documentary.
Jean-Marie Gigon entered the world of filmmaking at the age of 22 when he directed It’s Still Time, a short fiction film that was released in cinemas in 1986. Several feature-length films followed. In 2005, Gigon founded SaNoSi Productions, a company committed to producing films for cinema and television that explore the world in all its diversity. To date, he has produced more than 80 films by filmmakers from all over the world, half of which are first features screened at more than 100 national and international festivals.
€163 839
Lyon Capitale TV, Ciclic Région Centre Val de Loire, Région Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur
January—September 2024, Morocco
March 2025
