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According to Muslim practice, burial ought to occur within 24-hours of death — so after Manny’s husband, Sameer, passes away suddenly, he is quickly confronted by a representative of Sameer’s family urging Manny to sign the papers necessary to ship the body back home to Kuwait.

Manny spends the next day clinging on to his rights as Sameer's husband, until he finally gets a chance to talk to Sameer's mother, who had been avoiding his calls since the death. By connecting with her, Manny accepts that delaying the burial will not bring his husband back — he cannot delay grief.

Ward Kamel

Creator

Ward is a Syrian-born, NYC-based filmmaker with a multidisciplinary approach to filmmaking. A graduate of NYU Tisch and the commencement speaker for his class, his latest short film, If I Die in America, premiered at SXSW. His previous short won him a Best Director award at NFFTY. The latest short he produced, Aziz, was a semifinalist in the Student Academy Awards®. His cinematography work has played at Aspen, MoMA, OutFest and the Arab Film Festival. His latest feature script was a second-rounder at the Austin Film Festival, as well as being accepted into the Stowe Story Lab.

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