WIFI RIDER
Besheh meesheh films
2020
Directed and produced by Roxy Rezvany. Produced in conjunction with the Lush Film Fund.
Life is lonely for young Palestinian, Shukri. He spends his days on the internet, immersed in a world where Western popstars preach self-love and unity, and where he can forget the lack of acceptance he faces in everyday life. But a life dreaming of paradise abroad does not bode well for a teenager stuck in East Jerusalem. What he desperately wants is to connect with others like him, who feel caught between an occupation, globalisation, and the universal growing pains that come with adulthood. In this 16mm documentary film, we follow Shukri from a childhood in East Jerusalem to moving to the hillside apartments of Amman, Jordan and the sandy shores of the Dead Sea. We discover the origins of his life as the ‘Wifi Rider’, and how he channelled his frustrations into art on the internet via tRASHY.
Read more on Short of the Week here, who had this to say about the music:
”I was especially taken by the lovely musical score from composer Matt Huxley. I don’t want to suggest that the music is solely doing the emotional heavy lifting, but it’s an intensely moving soundscape that builds throughout, culminating in a bravura sequence at the Dead Sea”.
Wifi Rider was a prize winner at the Torino Short Film market, screened at the London Palestine Film Festival and Aesthetica, and was selected by Academy award winner Roger Ross Williams for an episode of his series, One Story Up, streaming on Topic. It was programmed as part of the Film London Artists Moving Image Network’s “Selected 11’ tour of UK galleries, and chosen as a Vimeo Staff Pick.