In conjunction with APIMED, the review QM invites you to explore a selection of documentaries that will allow you to discover the Mediterranean from a new perspective.

This is an audiovisual journey through wounded cities, bodies in rebellion, overflowing borders, and forgotten civilisations that, nonetheless, continue to beat beneath the surface.

From Homer to the Alhambra, from the Andalusian coast to the ruins of Raqqa, this region has produced founding myths that today engage with new visceral, political, archaeological and migrant narratives, reinterpreting them in light of the present.

Far from tourist clichés and orientalist nostalgia, these contemporary works immerse us in a sea shaken by personal memories, political conflicts, living ruins of the past, and odysseys of the present. Each film is one piece in a complex mosaic that reinvents Mediterranean myths, contrasts them with current realities, and challenges us from the intimate, the collective, and the symbolic.

Here, there are no endless beaches or ancient harmony: there are bodies that resist, voices that narrate what has been silenced, vestiges that still speak, and myths that are reconstructed in intimate, political, archaeological, or migrant terms. These recent films open the door to the complexities of a region, and of an imaginary, where past and present dialogue in constant tension.

Contemporary Odysseys: Migrant Bodies and Internal Exiles

Odyssey: Behind the Myth

Odyssey: Behind the Myth reinterprets Ulysses’ journey, exploring how this mythical adventure connects with contemporary travels through the Mediterranean landscapes. The film invites us to question what it means to be a hero today, while connecting epic narrative with modern migrations.

Remember My Name

This echo resonates particularly in Remember My Name, where the journey is not that of a mythical hero, but of African teenagers crossing the Melilla fence in search of a future. These young people, who initially see themselves as shipwrecked in a sea of uprootedness, discover in dance a way to rebuild their identity and find a “family”. However, upon turning eighteen, they once again face the elements, stripped of their refuge and forced to resume their struggle for survival. Here, the myth of the initiatory journey transforms into a migrant and collective odyssey, in which the journey is not only physical, but also a path toward belonging and self-reinvention in the face of adversity.

The Memory of Al-Andalus: Ruins that Talk

In Medina Azahara, the Lost Pearl of Al-Andalus and in The Builder of the Alhambra, the myth of Al-Andalus comes to life through the ruins and remains of a forgotten Islamic civilisation. These documentaries not only revive the splendour of the Caliphate cities, but also question their erasure and invite us to reflect on what it means to excavate and reconstruct a past that has been systematically dismembered.

Medina Azahara, the Lost Pearl of Al-Andalus

Medina Azahara reconstructs the Caliphate city of Córdoba, an account of the peak of Islamic power in the Iberian Peninsula. The excavation of its ruins is not limited to a simple historical recovery; it is a profound reflection on what it means to excavate and restore a civilisation that has been systematically erased from the collective memory, especially in the context of modern Europe. This film invites us to reconsider our relationship with a silenced past, challenging historical amnesia and offering a new perspective on the legacy of Al-Andalus.

The Builders of the Alhambra

For its part, The Builders of the Alhambra explores the creation of one of the most iconic monuments in the Mediterranean, highlighting the fundamental role of the artisans and workers who, through their work, breathed life into this jewel of Islamic architecture. The documentary reveals how, centuries later, the myth of the Alhambra lives on, albeit fragmented by the political and cultural disputes of the present, which continue to reinterpret its legacy in a contemporary context.

Both films confront us with the question as to what ruins tell us about our present and our historical memory. Far from being mere vestiges of the past, the ruins of Medina Azahara and the Alhambra continue to speak, defying oblivion and reconstructing the myth of a civilisation still present in the walls that resist the passage of time.

The Wounded Myth: War, Occupation and Return

Anxious in Beirut, No Other Land, and Return to Raqqa immerse us in geographies marked by trauma, occupation and resistance, revealing a Mediterranean where the myth of harmony is deeply fragmented.

Anxious in Beirut

In Anxious in Beirut, the city becomes an anxious, vibrant and tattered body, a reflection of a country in collapse. The voice of filmmaker Zakaria becomes an intimate diary that unravels the anguish and uprooting in a Beirut ravaged by revolutions, explosions, and an uncertain future.

No Other Land

For its part, No Other Land provides a harrowing vision of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Basel Adra’s camera films from within, refusing to reduce the conflict to a Manichean narrative. His gaze refuses to dehumanise those involved, even the “other”, the Israeli journalist who becomes an unlikely ally in the fight for justice. The occupation, far from being a simple political event, becomes a shared human tragedy, a myth of resistance and dignity that unfolds on camera.

Return to Raqqa

Return to Raqqa reconstructs, through the memory of journalist Marc Marginedas, one of the darkest episodes in the contemporary Mediterranean: the mass kidnapping of journalists by ISIS. Through his account, we explore the ruins of a devastated city, where echoes of the past seem to call for a narrative that transcends horror, where the myth of return and reparation is constructed through pain and memory.

This selection of documentaries draws a more complex, sensitive, and critical map of the Mediterranean. From intimate archive to archaeological exploration, from political testimony to the migrant odyssey, each film reminds us that this sea not only unites geographies but intertwines memories, wounds, dreams, and forms of resistance.

These stories, far removed from the idyllic postcards of the Mediterranean, dismantle the vision of a harmonious region. Instead, they present a polyphony of open wounds and living testimonies, where the myth is reconstructed, not as a refuge of peace, but as a battlefield where voices, still resonant, fight for justice, memory and survival.

Revisiting Mediterranean myths today is not about repeating them, but rather about interrogating them, traversing them, allowing them to speak in the plural. The films brought together here do so with an honest, courageous and profoundly creative approach. They invite us not only to look, but to listen; not only to understand, but to be moved.