Mohanad Yaqubi — Revolutionaries Never Die

Jocelyne Saab emailed Mohanad Yaqubi in October 2018 asking him to make something with her. She died two months later, before he answered. Revolutionaries Never Die is the reply, assembled out of what she left: 11 boxes holding 115 film and audio reels lodged with the CNC in Paris, shot across Lebanon, Palestine, Iran and Western Sahara. Yaqubi credits it as a letter rather than a film, and the credit is the tell. It ran 80 minutes at its Locarno world premiere and took the Filmmakers of the Present special jury prize on August 15, from an edition running 233 films chosen out of a record 7,759 submissions. An archivist who spends years getting someone else's footage into a conversation is doing a different job from directing. Locarno just paid for it as authorship.