Synopsis:

On the second day of Eid al-Fitr in May 2021, Safaa Khatib films Israeli special forces storming her family home in Kafr Kanna and arresting her father, Sheikh Kamal Khatib, a prominent political leader. What begins as a sudden raid unfolds into years of legal uncertainty, as he is detained, placed under house arrest, and later tried in a prolonged case.

As the trial stretches into its fifth year, Safaa turns her camera toward her father and their family’s daily life in the Lower Galilee, tending the land, sharing time, and holding onto routine amid looming uncertainty. Through intimate encounters and filmed conversations with her father, the film moves between present-day routines and fragments of the past, drawing on a rare archive that captures Palestinian life within the 1948 territories.

Moving between the courtroom and the home, the film traces how political violence seeps into private life, memory, and the body. Through her lens, and informed by her background in paper conservation, Safaa preserves family documents while using cinema to preserve something more fragile: her relationship with her father, turning shared time and image-making into an act of care, resistance, and continuity in the face of potential loss.

Director’s profile:

Safaa Khatib (b. 1994, Kafr Kanna, Galilee) is a Palestinian artist, filmmaker and paper conservator. She holds a BFA in Photography from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (2016), an MA in Cinema Studies from the University of Haifa (2019), and a diploma in paper conservation from Palazzo Spinelli, Florence (2024).

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Middle East Institute (Washington, D.C.), Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), and A.M. Qattan Foundation (Ramallah), as well as in Madrid, Brussels, Casablanca and across Palestine. Her project The Braids Rebellion received the YAYA Award (Young Artist of the Year, A.M. Qattan Foundation).

Khatib has participated in residencies at Cité internationale des arts (Paris), UNIDEE/Cittadellarte (Biella), Matadero Madrid and Etxe Betea (Bilbao). Her practice moves between filmmaking, archives and paper conservation, engaging image-making and material preservation as ways to explore memory, identity and resistance.

Producers’ profiles:

May Jabareen is a Palestinian cultural activist and producer at Philistine Films. Active in the film industry since 2011, she has collaborated on acclaimed Palestinian and international productions. Recently, she acted as associate producer on Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36 and co-producer on Nicolas Wadimoff’s Qui Vit Encore and Marjolein Busstra’s House of Hope.

A participant in the EAVE Producers Workshop and a graduate in Cultural Work and Arts Management, she has worked across independent, experimental and mainstream art projects, committed to strengthening the Palestinian arts and film industry.

María Eugenia Lombardi is an Italian-Argentine creative and executive producer with more than 15 years of experience in independent cinema. An EAVE graduate and Emerging Producers alumna (Ji.hlava), she has produced feature films and series co-produced across Europe, Latin America, Africa and the MENA region.

She is also a jury member, mentor, and member of the Film Academy and CIMA (Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media, Spain). She is currently producing Different Colors of Sabir through Ginevra Films S.R.L.S. (Italy).