Shorts 3

Naim and Wadee'a (2000)

Dir. Najwa Najjar // 2000 // Documentary // 20 Mins

This documentary by Najwa Najjar explores social life in Yaffa through a miniature portrait of a Palestinian couple, Wadee’a Aghabi and Naim Azar, the filmmaker’s grandparents who lived there before the expulsion in 1948. The story is built on the oral accounts of Naim and Wadee’a’s three daughters, offering a glimpse into the memories of a couple forced to leave their home, and the effect displacement had on their family.

Solomon’s Stone (2015)

Dir. Ramzi Maqdisi // 2015 // Comedy // 26 mins

Hussein, a young Palestinian man, receives a letter from the Israeli post office to appear in person to receive a package. He has to pay the sum of 20,000 $ US dollars in order to collect that package. Hussein’s curiosity to find out what the package contains drives him to sell everything he owns, despite the outright rejection of his mother, changing their lives forever.
Adapted from the novel Blue Light by Hussein Barghouty.

Strawberry (2017)

Dir. Aida Kaadan // 2017 // Drame // 17 mins

Samir, 43, is the owner of a shoe shop in Ramallah who has never seen the sea. He decides to sneak past the Israeli border with other Palestinian construction workers to fulfill his dream of seeing the sea. Instead, he ends up at a construction site where Anas, 22, asks him to work for him.

Ambience (2017)

Dir. Wissam Aljafari // 2017 // Experimental // 15 mins

Two young Palestinians try to record a demo for a Music Competition inside a noisy crowded refugee camp. While failing to record because of the chaos surrounding them, they discover a creative method for meeting the deadline.

Roof Knocking (2017)

Dir. Sina Salimi // 2017 // Drama // 13 mins

In Gaza, a woman prepares a meal for her family to break the fast in the month of Ramadan. A phone call by an Israeli soldier alerts her of the bombing of her building in 10 minutes. Coming to accept her family’s fate is the only way she has to make a stand for her life, with grim consequences.

Salt of This Sea (2008)

Drama, 1h 48m

Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather’s savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Stubborn, passionate and determined to reclaim what is hers, she fulfils her life-long dream of “returning” to Palestine. Once there, slowly she is taken apart by the reality around her and is forced to confront her own anger. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even if it’s illegal. In this quest for life, we follow their trail through remains of Palestine.

Writer & Director: Annemarie Jacir

Starring: Suheir Hammad & Saleh Bakri

Cinematography: Benoît Chamaillard

Music: Kamran Rastegar

Editing: Michèle Hubinon

Yamo (2011)

Documentary, 1h 6m

It's a film about today, about the choices we make in life. A film about time fleeing at full speed and time suspended. This is not a portrait of my mother, nor of my memory, nor of my house, nor of my family. Yamo is the mixture of all these elements which brings us towards a cut-down dialogue between two generations. A dialogue about dreams, failures, the present, and the future.

Writer & Director: Rami El-Nihawi

Producers: Monica Borgmann & Lokman Slim for UMAM Productions / Rami El-Nihawi for Sakado

Photography: Rami Nihawi & Maroon Asmar

Sound Recordist: Rayan Obeideyin

Editing: Anne de Mo

Sound Design: Lama Sawaya

War Generation - Beirut (1988)

Documentary, 50m

In Beirut, children grow up on the barricades and soon trade their toy pistols for real machine guns. War Generation - Beirut explores the lives, dreams and fears of three generations of young people living in the heart of the civil war in Lebanon. This seminal work from Jean Chamoun and Mai Masri remains one of the most powerful anti-war documents of the period.

Produced & Directed By: Jean Chamoun & Mai Masri

Photographed & Edited By: Mai Masri

Sound: Jean Chamoun

Narrator: Margaret Magnusson

Massacre (2005)

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In Memory of Lokman Slim

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Documentary, 1h 38m

Between September 16 and 18, 1982, for two nights and three days, the killers of Sabra and Shatila went about their heinous crimes. In the end, they had murdered between 1,000 and 3,000 Palestinian civilians, predominantly women, children and old people. The precise number of victims - both those killed and those missing - is not known to this very day. The perpetrators primarily originated from the ranks of the Forces Libanaises, a Christian militia affiliated to Israel. The logistics for this massacre were provided by the Israeli Army, under the auspices of the former Minister of Defence and current Minister President, Ariel Sharon. In 1982, the massacre in the Lebanese Palestinian camps deeply shook the public throughout the world, but today it has been (almost) entirely forgotten. This is despite the fact that it is a role model for all the massacres that followed: for example that in Rwanda or those committed during the Yugoslavian wars. Again and again, the unanswered questions surface: what drives people to such excesses of brutality, and how are the perpetrators able to live on? Massaker is - both in contents and aesthetically - a psycho-political study of six perpetrators, who participated in the massacre of Sabra and Shatila both on orders and on their own personal initiative. The film intertwines the mental dispositions of the killers with their political environment and broaches the phenomenon of collective violence through their accounts.

Directors: Monica Borgmann, Lokman Slim, Hermann Theissen

Production: Joachim Ortmanns for Lichtblick Film

Editing: Anne de Mo, Bernd Euscher

Cinematography: Nina Menkes

Winner of the Fipresci Preis, Panorama, Berlinale 2005

A World Not Ours (2012)

Documentary, 1h 33m

A World Not Ours is an intimate, humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family.

Director: Mahdi Fleifel

Prodocers: Patrick Campbell & Mahdi Fleifel

Editor: Michael Aaglund

Sound Designer: Zhe Wu

Fix Me (2009)

Documentary, 1h 38m

Palestinian filmmaker Raed Andoni doesn’t spare himself in his search for the cause of the headaches that have tormented him for many years. He allows a foreign crew to film his time spent in therapy—the fact that they don’t speak Arabic makes it easier for him to embark on the sessions without inhibitions.

The recurring themes throughout these meetings—filmed from behind a two-way mirror—are the consequences of the Israeli occupation. The same applies to Andoni’s everyday life, some of which he films himself. Checkpoints, police violence and the huge West Bank wall are part of it, in both mundane and powerful ways. He visits his mother, his politically aware sister and her son, and he also talks with the friends he made when he was a political prisoner. Their conversations may be serious, but they are filled with the black humor and philosophical detachment necessary to survive. Andoni’s quest leads to personal and universal insights, and it also allows repressed memories of traumatic events to rise to the surface. These memories formed the basis of his 2017 documentary Ghost Hunting.

Director: Raed Andoni

Production: Raed Andoni - Dar Films Production, Palmyre Baldinier - Les Films de Zayna, Nicolas Wadimoff - Akka Films, Nadia Turincev - Rouge International

Cinematography: Filip Zumbrunn, Aldo Mugnier

Editing: Tina Baz, Saed Andoni, Samer Qatta

Music: Eik Rug, Yousef Hbeisch

Palestine Blues (2006)

Documentary, 1h 12m

What is left for Palestinian farmers who learn that in 24hrs the Israeli Army will confiscate their lands for the construction of the wall? What do people do when their very survival is threatened by one of the world's most powerful armies? Palestine Blues tells the story of a village's confusion, desperation, and resistance, their daily victories and wrenching defeats. Unexpectedly filled with moments of poetry and humour this film's intimate access, unforgettable characters and story structure blur the line between documentary and narrative. Filmed at times with a hidden camera and at times under extreme duress, PalestinianAmerican filmmaker Nida Sinnokrot gives us a lasting chronicle of a people and their ancient lifegiving orchards, ever threatened by destruction.

Director: Nida Sinnokrot

Mars at Sunrise (2014)

Documentary, 1h 15m

A Palestinian artist tells a Jewish-American poet how he was tortured by a failed Israeli artist who wanted to turn him into an informant. Mars at Sunrise depicts a war waged on the imagination. A painter’s resistance, courage and spirit can never be imprisoned in this highly stylized story of the conflict of two frustrated artists on either side of Israel’s militarized borders.

Writer & Director: Jessica Habie

Cinematographer: Xavi José

Editors: Luis Carballar, EresOz

Starring: Ali Suliman, Guy Elhanan, Maisam Masri

Tell Your Tale, Little Bird (2007)

Documentary, 1h 30m

Seven militant women (fedaiyat) of the revolutionary generation tell the story of the Palestinian resistance through accounts of their own lives.

Cut from 35 hours of interviews with leaders of the armed struggle, the film presents an image of confident, unapologetic and proud feminine identity. Together, the memories of these women narrate the dream of a generation, yet unrealized.

Tell Your Tale, Little Bird is a testament to the power of remembrance, positioning memory as an essential element of feminist struggle. The film reminds us that this oral tradition may carry recollection of past resistance, but it is in the very practice of retelling women’s stories that the political act has persisted.

Director: Arab Loutfi

Subjects: Leila Khaled, Therese Halasa, Aisha Odeh, Rashida Obeida, Rasmea Odeh, Widad Qamari, Amina Dahbour

Private (2004)

Drama, 1h 30m

Mohammed (Mohammed Bakri), a Palestinian teacher, lives with his family in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. When violence erupts near their house, Mohammed refuses to evacuate, despite the fears of his wife, Samia (Areen Omari). Israeli soldiers occupy the residence's top floor, arousing the hatred of their son, Yusef (Amir Hasayen), and daughter, Mariam (Hend Ayoub), who spies on the men. Despite being given freedom to leave, Mohammed insists that his family stick together in their house.

Winner of the Golden Leopard at the 57th Locarno International Film Festival

Director: Saverio Costanzo

Starring: Mohammad Bakri, Lior Miller, Areen Omari, Hend Ayoub, Tomer Russo

Screenplay: Saverio Costanzo, Sayed Qashua, Alessio Cremonini, Camilla Costanzo

Editor: Francesca Calvelli

Producer: Mario Gianani

Jenin, Jenin (2002)

54 mins, Documentary

"Where is God," an elderly man desperately wonders when surveying the debris in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin.

Directed and co-produced by Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri, Jenin, Jenin includes testimony from Jenin residents after the Israeli army's Defensive Wall operation. The city and camp were the scenes of fierce fighting which ended with Jenin flattened and scores of Palestinians dead. Palestinians as well as numerous human rights groups accused Israel of committing war crimes in the attack. The United Nations appointed a commission of inquiry, but Israel refused to let its members visit the scene.

Banned in Israel, Jenin Jenin is dedicated to Iyad Samudi, the producer of the film, who returned home to Yamun after the shooting of the film was completed. On June 23, as Israeli forces besieged Yamun, Samudi was shot and killed as he was leaving a militarily-closed area with three friends.

Winner of Best Film — Carthage International Film Festival

Winner of the International Prize for Mediterranean Documentary Filmmaking & Reporting

Directed By: Mohammad Bakri

Produced by:
Iyad Samudi and Mohammad Bakri

Written by:
Mohammad Bakri

Edited by:
Leandro Pantanella

Like Twenty Impossibles (2002)

Drama, 20m

When a Palestinian film crew averts a closed checkpoint by taking a remote side road, the political landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of military occupation. Both a visual poem and a narrative, like twenty impossibles wryly questions artistic responsibility and the politics of filmmaking, while speaking to the fragmentation of a people. 

Director: Annemarie Jacir

Writers: Annemarie Jacir, Kamran Rastegar

Cinematographer: Philippe Bellaiche

Starring: Reem Abu Sbaih, Ismail Dabbagh, Ashraf Abu Moch

Ambulance (2016)

Documentary, 1h 20m

A raw, first-person account of the last war in Gaza in the summer of 2014. Mohamed Jabaly, a young man from Gaza City, joins an ambulance crew as war approaches, looking for his place in a country under siege, where at times there seems to be no foreseeable future. While thousands of things are published on the recurring violence in Gaza, the stories behind them remain hidden. Not this one.

Director: Mohamed Jabaly

Little Wars (1982)

Drama, 1h 48m

Little Wars tells the story of Lebanon’s civil war in 1975 through three characters. Talal, son of a Feudal lord, returns to his region after the disappearance of his father to become a warlord himself. Soraya is in love with Talal and tries to help him by abducting a businessman. Finally, Nabil, a photojournalist who uses the war to trade drugs and tries to pose as a hero, but is in fact very far from being one. Little stories happening during little wars.

The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 35th Cannes Film Festival in 1982.

Starring: Soraya Khoury, Nabil Ismail, Roger Hawa, Rifaat Tarabay and Rida Khoury

Written & Directed by: Maroun Bagdadi

Dialogue: Kamal Kassar

Cinematography: Edward Lachman and Heiner Hoelscher

Music: Gabrielle Yared

Editing: Joelle Van Effentere

presented in collaboration with

Saken (2014)

Documentary, 1h 30m

Saken is an observational documentary set in Jordan that follows the friendship of Ibrahim, a Palestinian fedai who was injured in Lebanon while on duty before the 1982 israeli invasion on Lebanon, leading to his paralysis, and Walid an Egyptian man who has been Ibrahim's companion and caretaker for the past 15 years. Saken is a film about friendship and sacrifice, how some people’s destinies are linked and hard to be broken.

Writer & Director: Sandra Madi
Producer: Majd Hijjawi
Director of Photography: Ali Saadi

My Love Awaits Me by the Sea (2013)

Documentary, 1h 20m

How do your return to a place that only exists in your mind? ‘My Love Awaits Me by the Sea’ is a poetic documentary narrating the story of the director Mais Darwazah, who takes a first time journey back to her homeland, Palestine. She leaves a secluded reality and follows a lover whom she has never met; Hasan, a Palestinian artist, who unveils a beautiful and utopian world to her. Fairytale and reality are woven together to question the elusiveness of place and the need to believe in dreams.

Director: Mais Darwazah

Producer: Rula Nasser

Return to Haifa (1982)

Drama, 1h 14m

Return to Haifa is based on Kanafani’s novel the plot of which takes place in 1967, when Palestinian refugees living in the newly occupied territories had an opportunity to visit the places from which they had been expelled in 1948. Saeed and Safiyya, a Palestinian couple expelled from Haifa in 1948, visit the home that had been their own. Miriam, a Holocaust survivor and now a Jewish Israeli citizen who lives in their house, lets them in. She moved there with her husband shortly after the Palestinian couple had been uprooted. The Palestinian couple returns to Haifa hoping to discover something about their baby, Khaldun, whom they had left at home that April morning in 1948, not realizing that neither of them would be able to return. The abandoned baby had been adopted by Miriam and her husband who gave him a Hebrew name – Dov, now a soldier in the Israeli army. This tragic encounter depicted by the movie emblematizes the Nakba’s being not only the tragedy of the Palestinian people but also of the Israeli Jews who cannot escape confronting this past and becoming accountable for it.

Director: Kassem Hawal

Infiltrators (2012)

Documentary, 1h 10m

The checkpoint is closed: “Detour, detour!” shouts a taxi driver, announcing the beginning of yet another uncertain search for a way around the barriers curtailing Palestinian movement in the West Bank.

Infiltrators is a visceral “road movie” that chronicles the daily travails of Palestinians of all backgrounds as they seek routes through, under, around, and over a bewildering matrix of barriers.

Following this high stakes “game” of cat and mouse with a handheld video camera, Khaled Jarrarʼs debut documentary was the standout success at the 2012 Dubai International Film Festival, winning the Muhr Arab Documentary Prize, the Special Jury Prize, and the International Critics Prize.

Director: Khaled Jarrar

Production: Sami Said, Mohanad Yaqubi

Editing: Gaetan Harem

Music: Carl Svensson