Shaza Muharam

Shaza returns to her hometown, Alexandria (Egypt), in a quest for memory. Following the death of her grandfather, she realizes that she suffers from a severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM): she knows the stories from the past but does not remember having lived them. She uses the camera as a tool to trigger memories, by recreating past events in familiar Alexandrian spaces. In the process, she discovers that the city, itself, has lost its memory, and her personal struggle confronts the plight of a collective urban memory that has evaporated into oblivion. “Mnemosyne” blurs the boundaries between media, disciplines and concepts: documentary and fiction film, science and myth, film and visual art, and the individual and the collective memory.