The Flight of the Stork

From the very first shot—when Soumaya Hidalgo Djahdou bursts into laughter as co-director Berta Vicente Salas films her—it’s clear that this joint debut is deeply personal. Soumaya grew up in Barcelona, and the emotional distance between her and her mother, who is originally from Algeria, often feels vast. That tension is evident in their somewhat prickly conversation about praying and Ramadan. Things shift, however, when Soumaya decides to visit her grandmother in Algeria.