Synopsis:

Between Two Houses (بين بيوت) moves between architecture and memory, following Bushra’s life through two houses: the house in Nazareth she was forced to leave as a child, and the house in Amman where she spent the last decades of her life.

Once animated by daily rituals and movement, the house in Amman now stands still. We return to that house after Bushra’s passing, where an overwhelming silence bears witness to her absence. The film returns to these spaces as a way of recovering memory. Architecture acts as both subject and method.

The film then shifts to her childhood home in Nazareth, which she was forced to leave —a chapter of her life known only through fragments: stories shaped by trauma, distance, and silence. We are confronted with the history of her displacement and what returning entails for the recovery of her place within that history.

Moving between present spaces and remembered ones, Bushra’s granddaughter weaves together archives, observation, and personal reflection.

Director’s profile:

Raya Shaban is an architect and filmmaker who received her degree from the Architectural Association in London. Her films engage questions of memory, storytelling, and the after-life of spaces within the domestic realm. More recently, her work has expanded toward observational documentary, exploring diverse narratives through architecture, art, and design. One of her latest films follows a fashion collective in Ramallah, Palestine, capturing the duality of life in the West Bank: moments of stillness and craft rooted in tradition, set against journeys shaped by tension. Across her practice, Raya uses film as a tool to observe how spaces and rituals quietly hold cultural memory.

Producer’s profile:

Sofía Peypoch has built an independent, self-produced filmmaking practice that transforms limited resources into powerful narrative tools. This led her to create mirror muse kino, a production house focused on subversive independent cinema. Its first feature project, obsidian, an experimental film about death and memory, is currently in post-production. Her vision of cinema is rooted both in form and intuitive practice. Her work has been awarded in Lisbon (DOCLISBOA 2023) and in Mexico (FICUNAM 2024). She has also received two major government grants supporting the production of her second feature (director/producer).