Loading Docs 2014 - Baba

Web (Full Length) – 2014

I thought of the film as being this smaller story that told a larger one about coming to New Zealand as an outsider and the clash of cultures of being Middle Eastern and Muslim, coming to a country which at that stage had very little interaction with people from that part of the world and had very little interaction with Islam.
– Joel Kefali, in an interview with The Wireless, 12 June 2014

I don’t want the film to look digital. I want it to look more like paintings or pages of a book than say, Walt Disney or Looney Tunes animation.
– Joel Kefali, in an interview with The Wireless, 12 June 2014

Joel, New Zealand what I tell you, in those days New Zealand was a one of the best countries. But New Zealander, they were real backwards.
– Baba

There’s a lot of familial affection embedded in Baba, accompanied by ample artistry. Though the drawings are simplified, Kefali strings his little blobs and lines together so deftly that when he pulls back at the end to show the full picture of what Sol has been talking about, the effect is surprisingly poignant. And throughout Baba, Kefali moves his animator’s “camera” with purpose, scanning up, down, and side to side, expressing with omni-directionality how one man’s life can lead him into places he never would’ve imagined.
– Review of Baba on The Dissolve, by Noel Murray, 12 June 2014