Miraculous Accident
Director
Assaf Gruber
Germany, Austria / 2025
29 min.
/ Original version with English subtitles
Original language
Polish, French, English
Miraculous Accident is a transtemporal film that narrates the love story between Nadir, a Moroccan student at the Łódź Film School in 1968, his Jewish editing teacher Edyta, and their shared relationship with Jarek, Nadir’s best friend and Edyta’s protégé. Nadir is among a group of North African students sent to study communist filmmaking techniques as part of the Eastern Bloc’s support for anti-imperialist struggles. Despite her opposition to Zionism, Edyta is forced to leave Poland due to the political rift between Poland and Israel following the Six-Day War. In 2024, Nadir returns to the school to make a film after discovering a forgotten letter Edyta wrote to him from Haifa in 1989. The film mourns the cruelty of nations, birthing rare miracles – accidental loves – only to crush them before they breathe.
Partially inspired by the life of former Moroccan student, poet, and filmmaker Abdelkader Lagtaâ – who also plays Nadir in the film – Miraculous Accident weaves its plot through original footage and extracts from 1960s student films by Lagtaâ and his peers.
Assaf Gruber, born in Jerusalem, is an artist and filmmaker living and working in Berlin. His work circles around the tension between individuals and institutions. The absurd biographies of the protagonists in his projects simultaneously reveal and obscure the reasons and motives that lead people to obey or rebel against their inner world or the society in which they live. His films have been featured in festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, FIDMarseille, and the Berlinale, among others. In 2016, his film The Right was presented at Forum Expanded.
Director Assaf Gruber. Screenplay Assaf Gruber. Cinematography Simon Veroneg. Editing Assaf Gruber. Music ouroboros. Sound Design Jochen Jezussek. Sound Maryla Kłosowska. Production Design Maja Pawlikowska. Costumes Maja Pawlikowska. Make-Up Kasia Wojtasik. Producer Guillaume Cailleau. Executive Producer Guillaume Cailleau. Production company CASKFILMS (Berlin, Germany). With Abdelkader Lagtaâ, Marta Ojrzynska, Mateusz Górski, Dagmara Bąk.
Films: 2007: Match Point (4 min), Manu and Dougie (11 min). 2009: Avgossepère (21 min). 2010: C'est comme un code à decoder (36 min). 2011: Binding (5 min). 2014: The Anonymity of the Night (4 min). 2015: Citizen in the Making (6 min), The Guardroom (9 min), The Right (11 min, forum expanded 2016). 2017: The Calling (17 min). 2018: The Conspicuous Parts (36 min). 2019: Daphne and Thomas (56 min). 2021: Transinent Witness (47 min). 2022: Rude Witness (18 min). 2023: Never Come Back (18 min). 2025: Miraculous Accident.
Funded by:
