Foreigner by Danielle Arbid (Lebanon/France 2002, 45 minutes, 35mm)

Synopsis:
Margot is an immigrant from a country on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. At 78, she still walks across Paris every day to iron clothes at the apartments of the well-to-do. Margot seldom meets her employers, yet she absorbs their world like a child in a dollhouse.
In French with English subtitles.

Post-screening panel discussion with Rabab Abdulhadi (NYU), Laura Bier (NYU) and Anahid Kassabian (Fordham University). Program co-presented by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, NYU

Biography:
Born in Beirut in 1970, Danielle Arbid left Lebanon when she was 18 to study literature and journalism in Paris. She worked in the French press for six years covering news from the Arab world. For the last five years, Danielle Arbid directed fiction and documentary films related to Middle East events and political affairs and her work has met with much success with both audiences and the media. Danielle Arbid received the Albert Londres Award for her movie Alone with the War. She also received the Villa Medicis Out of the Walls Award for At the Borders, and the Grand Prize at the Vendome Film Festival, Pictures in Region (France) for her movie Foreigner.

Festivals & Awards:
Locarno Film Festival, 2002
Grand Prize, Vendome Film Festival, Pictures in Region, 2002
Biennial of Arab Cinemas, Arab World Institute, Paris, 2002, in competition
Trieste Eastern European, 2003