In the Presence of Absence: An Evening With noncitizen

noncitizen is a nomadic film and cultural project founded in 2015, based in Stockholm and Gothenburg. The aim is to highlight the issues of oppression in our time and the right to have rights, borders, and freedom of movement. We work with and for people with migration experience and organize film workshops to create media together.

Ahmad Alattar (b. 1997, Lebanon) is a sound designer with a multidisciplinary background. Alattar lacks formal musical training and influences from his formative years but uses Arab pop song excerpts and virtual modular synthesizers to transform the music he was meant to have experienced growing up. His work aims to evoke the sensation of being stripped of music while retaining a music-adjacent atmosphere, resulting in an eerie and captivating auditory experience that captures the essence of rediscovering music.

Merazul Islam (b. 2004, Bangladesh) has been living in Gothenburg, Sweden, since 2018, where he is completing his second year of high school. He has been creating films together with Roozbeh Behtaji for two years now, both acting and directing. What’s Your Problem, Bruno? is his second film, which premiered at the Gothenburg Film Festival 2023.

Roozbeh Behtaji (b. 1981, Iran/Sweden) was born in Tehran and raised in Angered, Sweden. He is a trained filmmaker at HDK-Valand – Academy of Art and Design and has, among other things, directed Bastian (SVT, 2012) and Diskoteksbranden 1998 (The Discotheque Fire 1998) (Göteborgs City Museum, 2021). Currently, Behtaji is the artistic director of the Gothenburg film movement Göthenburgo.

Elyas Alavi (b. 1982, Afghanistan) is a visual artist, curator, and poet based in Adelaide, Australia. He has published three poetry books, I’m a daydreamer wolf (2008, Tehran), Some Wounds (2012, Kabul), and Hodood (2015, Tehran). He graduated with a Master of Visual Arts in 2016 from the University of South Australia and has exhibited internationally. Alavi visits many issues in his works, but mainly memory, migration, displacement, and exile.

Critical Border Studies is a network for academics, artists, and activists who are interested in border studies. The Critical Border Studies initiative aims to push forward collaborative research projects; organize conferences and workshops; and create a forum for contacts and collaboration between researchers. Hosted by CEMFOR, Critical Border Studies is affiliated with the Engaging Vulnerability program at Uppsala University and with the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University.

Meriem Bennani (b. 1988, Morocco) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Juxtaposing and mixing the language of reality TV, documentaries, phone footage, animation, and high production aesthetics, she explores the potential of storytelling while amplifying reality through a strategy of magical realism and humor. She has been developing a shape-shifting practice of films, sculptures, and immersive installations composed with a subtle agility to question our contemporary society and its fractured identities, gender issues, and the ubiquitous dominance of digital technologies.

Amany Khalifa (b. 1985, Occupied Palestine) is a researcher, community organizer, and former local mobilization director at Grassroots Al-Quds, a platform for Palestinian community-based mobilization and long-term strategizing in Occupied Jerusalem. Within this capacity, she has led local campaigns and supported local communities and partners. She provides political analysis and has a broad and experienced understanding of development and resistance to oppressive policies under the Israeli occupation. She has a BA in Social Work, a Master in Cultural Studies, and is currently completing a MA in Performance Studies at New York University.

Nour Helou (b. 1998, Lebanon) is a writer curious about ways we relate to each other. Her focus is on the transformation of beauty standards and gender norms in the SWANA region. She has a BA in Art History from the American University of Beirut, and is currently completing a MA in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. As a film programmer, Helou has worked at Shasha Movies which she helped launch in 2020. Two years later, Nour joined noncitizen in Sweden as a project manager. She has previously published writings in Glänta and the Arab Image Foundation Lab. She is represented in the art collection of the Public Art Agency, Sweden. When the fruits are ripe, Helou is also a certified pastry-maker.

Afrang Nordlöf Malekian (b. 1995, Iran/Sweden) lives and works in Stockholm. His practice deals with history’s hidden actors and makers, where historicity is put into use as a form of documentation and aspiration that calls for improbable futurities, examining how narratives, hierarchies, systems, and language disappear, re-appear and return, and transform in the most unexpected ways. It poses the question of how to think about the political expression contained in fleeting moments or mundane actions, which are often dismissed as apolitical. Nordlöf Malekian has previously conducted artistic research at the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut, and been a resident at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. He holds an MA from the Dutch Art Institute and an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. His work has been shown in places such as the 10th Berlin Biennale, Moderna Museet, Tensta Konsthall, and IASPIS. Nordlöf Malekian’s work is in public collections, including Moderna Museet, Public Art Agency Sweden, and Arab Image Foundation Library.

Christian Rossipal (b. 1991, Sweden) is a scholar, writer, and curator based in Stockholm and New York. He is a PhD candidate in Cinema Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and a founding member of noncitizen. His writing on borders, migration, and documentary has appeared in Film Quarterly, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and The Global South, among other journals. On the noncitizen collective and its project the Noncitizen Archive, in particular, he has written for the anthology Migrant, Multicultural and Diasporic Heritage: Beyond and Between Borders (Routledge Key Issues in Cultural Heritage), the Diacritics online series Unarchive, and World Records Journal (in an edited roundtable with the Arab Image Foundation and the Nakba Archive).