Spanisches Filmfestival: The d.a.i. presents Out of Cordoba

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A Documentary Film by Jakob Bender

In the first decade of our new millennium, “religion”, “intolerance” and “terrorism” seem to have become related terms.

Out of Cordoba asks whether this has always been the case, not only in the Middle East, but world-wide. Or, on the contrary, can religion be a positive influence for peace and progress around the globe?

Out of Cordoba will take us from New York after the 9/11 attacks to Spain, Morocco, Paris, Berlin, Qatar, Cairo, and Jerusalem, along the way looking for evidence of dialogue and the mythic convivencia (coexistence) where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in mutual tolerance and peace.

In this search, we follow the footsteps of Maimonides and Averroes, two medieval geniuses who, both born in the city of Cordoba in Muslim Spain, and each one from within his own faith, courageously attempted to harmonize faith and science, reason and revelation.

While their controversial ideas caused their own communities to burn the books of Averroes and Maimonides, their writings form a crucial link between classic Greece philosophy and Western thinking, and thus helped chart the path from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

Out of Cordoba tells the story of the film’s director, Jacob Bender, an American Jew, who, responding to the challenge that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 have posed to his belief in interfaith reconciliation, undertakes a journey around the Mediterranean.

Along the way, he meets Muslims, Jews, and Christians who are utilizing their religious traditions to challenge the propositions that there is an inevitable “clash of civilizations” between the West and the Muslim world, an incompatibility between Islam and democracy, and an eternal conflict between Arabs and Jews.

In English, Spanish, and Arabic.

In Kooperation mit den Spanischen Filmtagen.