Filmhuset, 2025-02-25
Members of A house Filmhuset nominated in Tempo Documentary Festival 2025
INTERVIEW WITH WASIM HARWILL, JULIAN MACHADO REDAELLI AND LINA BLOMQVIST
Wasim Harwill is an artist and member of A house Filmhuset. The film “Is this a place to grow?” is part of his artistic project “A house without date palm is no home”, which was originally presented as an installation during a graduation exhibition at Beckmans School of Design in 2023. The project toured with Svensk form in 2024 and addresses issues of belonging and exclusion. The film, inspired by Wasim’s own experiences of being a racialized body in a white context, is now nominated in Tempo Documentary Festival 2025 in the category NEW DOC.
Directors: Wasim Harwill and Lina Blomqvist
Producer: Julian Machado Redaelli
Hi Wasim! You, Julian and Lina started your collaboration early in the project process in 2023. Can you tell us more about how it developed over the years?
– In the spring of 2023, Julian Machado Redaelli worked in parallel with issues of migration, exclusion and alienation on his own graduation film “Estar perto não é físico/To be close is not physical”. In conversation with Julian, it came naturally that I should film the mound to have the opportunity to show all sides of the artistic and conceptual project “A house without date palm is no home”. Lina Blomqvist and I have long had conversations about “the body in space” and how bodies in relation to each other and our surroundings affect the experience of each other. My experiences and feelings became a central part of the project, where I had a very intuitive process that included acting and performance. Lina comes from an “outside perspective” and has a more academic and conceptual perspective. All our different approaches have shaped the movie into what it is today.
Wasim, can you tell us about how the idea for the film came about and why you felt the film format was right for documenting your art project?
– The idea for the film grew out of documenting the process of my art project “A house without date palm is no home”. I filmed throughout the spring of 2023 and the short film is really just a small excerpt from all the material that exists. Thanks to the film format, I can show the project from a new perspective. Are we looking at the mound or is the mound looking at us? Who sees and who does? Who is responsible for making the mound feel at home?
I wanted to talk about what it means to be a racialized body in a Vitt context. I felt a constant lack of understanding during my years at Beckmans School of Design. I tried to make visible what my body experienced and the structural problems that the school needs to work with, but I was too often met with a lack of understanding. The fact that I exhibited a mound of earth was not immediately met with a standing ovation. But I knew that this project was bigger than me and the school. Filming it became a way for me to document what actually happened and that it actually happened. For me, this movie is a metaphor for my time at Beckmans.
But my experience at Beckmans is not unique unfortunately. I think many can relate to the feeling of constantly trying to integrate in a new place and being left with the feeling of not trying hard enough. But where does the responsibility lie in making someone feel at home?
Lina, in your work you have long been interested in the ‘body in space’ and the relationship between body and environment. How did you incorporate these ideas into your work on the film?
– In the process, Wasim and I have talked a lot about how different bodies are perceived in different spaces. In the cultural context we are often in, and society at large, the norm is white bodies. But the “diversity work” that many people are working on right now almost always focuses on the non-white body, which is strange because it should be the other way around. This movie is really a rebellion against that. In the project, the mound is the non-white body that “everyone else” has to adapt to, which makes many people uncomfortable. I think we generally become very uncomfortable when confronted with how our body affects others. I think everyone has experienced this at some point in their lives – if not, you are always the norm in the rooms you move around in. So maybe it’s time to try something new?
Julian, you and Wasim worked in parallel on your own projects in spring 2023. Do these have any common themes, and how did your collaboration influence each other’s work?
– You could say that both our works explore in different ways what it means to migrate and settle in a new place. For Wasim, it’s about trying to understand the place he is in right now and how difficult it can be to create a new sense of belonging after having to leave his home behind. My work is more about looking back to the place that has been left behind, a kind of reflection on the distance and time that separates us from it, and the memories we carry with us of our home that will fade over time. So our starting points are very different, but somehow we are both dealing with the same feeling and the same issues. What we have tried to communicate is that migration is not just a physical movement from one place to another, but something that completely changes how we see ourselves throughout the rest of our lives. Therefore, it was very natural for us to work together to develop our respective projects and explore our issues from a more nuanced perspective.
The film is nominated in Tempo Documentary Festival 2025 in the category NEW DOC. Congratulations! Tell us more about it – how does it feel?
– Thank you so much! It feels great to be able to show it at Tempo Documentary Festival, an incredible honor! It’s hard to explain how it feels, but we’ve been working on the project since 2023 and we’ve longed to show the film. On March 6 and 9, we will be presenting our short film in the NEW DOC category together with extremely talented filmmakers. It will be exciting to see how the film is received in the cinema – the film has a lot of humor in it despite its heavy theme and I hope that those who see the film can also laugh at the absurd situations that arise.
Finally, we would like to thank everyone who has been involved in the work on the film! And thanks for the residency at Filmhuset A House, where both myself and Julian Machado Redaelli have been given time and a place to complete our short film projects for the past two years, since summer 2023.
Finally, what are the plans for the future?
– I’m currently working on my next short film, a feature film based on a personal experience, together with screenwriter Erica Moon-Nam Lindberg. We are working on the script and this spring we will start casting for the movie. We plan to shoot sometime this summer.
Want to see the movie? Book tickets here: https://tempofestival.se/film/ar-det-har-en-plats-att-gro-pa/
Wasim Harwill is a Swedish-Iraqi director and artist. Born in Iraq, Baghdad. Grew up in Tensta and Grimsta. Harwill holds a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communication from Beckmans College of Design and today he studies acting at Actors Studio Stockholm.
Julian Machado Redaelli is a Swedish-Brazilian filmmaker and designer. Born in Sweden, Stockholm. Lives and works in Stockholm. Redaelli holds a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communication from Beckmans College of Design and a Bachelor of Philosophy in Continental Philosophy from Södertörn University.
Lina Blomqvist is an architect and designer. Born in Sweden, Umeå. Lives and works in Stockholm. Blomqvist has a master’s degree in architecture SAR/MSA and has been working with idea-driven architecture, product design and urban planning at the architectural firm SandellSandberg since 2021.