Hot Docs 2019 Review: Your Last Walk in the Mosque

Deceptively simple in its construction, but unforgettable in terms of its impact, Ubaydah Abu-Usayd and Abderrahmane Hedjoudje powerful and heartbreaking documentary Your Last Walk in the Mosque gives the victims and witnesses of a mass shooting another chance to move towards healing and share their stories of grief, loss, and even hope.

Your Last Walk in the Mosque is comprised solely of interviews with survivors of a January 2017 terrorist incident at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City, which left six dead and nineteen others injured (with one of Abu-Usayd and Hedjoudje’s subjects still struggling in hospital). The interviews, conducted mere months after the shooting, paint a stark picture; not only of what it was like to be there amid such chaos, but of the fraught healing process and the dangers of police not taking previously reported hate crimes seriously before the escalated to such a tragic conclusion.

Those brave enough to share their memories in Your Last Walk in the Mosque are all going through a profoundly sad moment in their lives, and Hedjoudje and Abu-Usayd make sure to illustrate how none of these survivors have similar answers when asked the same questions. They’re all struggling with loss, PTSD, and survivor’s guilt in their own unique, profound ways. Some can forgive the shooter and hope to move on, while others will never be able to get past what they’ve lost. The emotional impact of these interviews – conducted among people from a cultural background that rarely get a chance to share their side of story without being filtered – is positively devastating, and through its sheer force of humanity, Your Last Walk in the Mosque becomes required viewing. It packs more raw emotion into fifty minutes than most series could pack into twenty hours of viewing.

Friday, April 26, 2019 – 8:00 pm – Innis Town Hall

Saturday, April 27, 2019 – 3:45 pm – Scotiabank Theatre 8