Dahlia Nemlich
Writer-director
Lebanon & France
Dahlia Nemlich is a French- Lebanese director and producer. In 2020, she directed her first fiction film titled ROADBLOCK, a 16 minutes short, produced by Marine Vaillant of Dewberries Films, shot during the Lebanese Revolution. Dahlia also directed and produced two music videos, BEIRUT, which garnered upwards of twenty thousand views on YouTube and IDAK, still in post- production. She is currently completing her second short film, SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN, produced by her partner in crime, Marine Vaillant and the Egyptian producer, awarded the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2020 for best short film, Muhammad Taymour. In 2022, Dahlia is developing her first feature film, ASSA LIKE A FISH IN A BOWL, with LIM.
In parallel to her work as a director, Dahlia has been a producer since 2011 working on series, features and digital content with TF1, Fullhouse production, Webedia and more recently The Talkies, in Beirut.
Project
Assa like a fish in a bowl
“Yasmine”, a 25 y/o Ethiopian girl starts a new job working as a live-in maid at the Haddad’s family, a young Lebanese couple with a one- year old baby girl, Aya. For her, it’s just another job, another family to take care of. She cleans, she cooks, she changes the diapers and goes to bed in her tiny room, built behind the kitchen. Being almost invisible to them, she sees and hears everything. As the days go by, she starts understanding the dynamics of this not so perfect family, a mother who doesn’t want to be a mother nor a wife, a father who never learned to be a father, and a little girl left alone with her most of the time. “Yasmine” slowly starts falling for that little girl, both in need of any kind of love. She starts believing in the illusion of being a normal person, in a normal world wishing SHE could have the handsome husband and the beautiful child.
It seems for “Yasmine”, that the illusion is materialising. And just like that, “Yasmine” returns to being “Assa”.
