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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Costa Brava, Lebanon
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Country: Lebanon
Director: Mounia Akl
Length: 106 mins
Synopsis: Members of a family quit the polluted, rubbish-strewn city of Beirut for an idyllic mountain home. However, their dreams of a utopian existence are shattered by the construction of a landfill on the boundary of their land.
Co-presented with Lebanese Film Festival in Canada
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
State of Agitation//قلتلك خلص
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Country: Lebanon
Director: Elie Khalifé
Length: 100 mins
Synopsis: Living in Beirut, a highly enthusiastic filmmaker is in a state of hyper inspiration characterized by an overfiow of contrasting ideas. As a consequence, his characters will go through compelling and extraordinary circumstances. To clear his mind, he heads north where a screening of his short films is scheduled in a rural public school. A series of encounters along the way will turn his world upside down.
Co-presented with Al Rawiya
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Khamsin
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Country: France
Director: Grégoire Couvert, Grégoire Orio
Length: 66 mins
Synopsis: Lebanon today. The traces of the civil war are all too tangible as government corruption becomes unbearable. In a country where conflict and peace are caught in an endless cycle, musicians from different backgrounds pool their talents to create an underground music scene. Each evokes his or her representation of Lebanon: its shifting geographical, political, historical and social borders, its painful passage through conflict and instability. A touching portrait of a young generation trying to build an oasis in a hostile environment where the forces of destruction continue to wreak havoc.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Don’t Get Too Comfortable
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Country: Yemen, Qatar, United States, Netherlands
Director: Shaima Al Tamimi
Length: 9 mins
Synopsis: Don’t Get Too Comfortable is a heartfelt introspective letter to my deceased grandfather. The letter questions the continuous pattern of movement amongst Yemenis in diaspora. The film fuses archival photographs, sourced footage, parallax animation, abstract videos to create an audio visual body of work that calls attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being felt by Yemeni (or non-Yemeni) migrants.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Algerian Chronicles
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Country: France
Director: Zak Kedzi
Length: 74 mins
Synopsis: Summer 2019, Zak wanders around the streets of Alger and dives into the Hirak, a series of protests happening in Algeria since February of that same year. His chronicles feed off encounters with men and women who observe through enlightened eyes their country and its struggles: through their words, the strength and complexity of such a movement takes shape.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Strangers After Midnight
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Country: Syria
Director: Kinda Youssef
Length: 22 mins
Synopsis: Moments that unfolded late one night in the life of four Syrian refugees in Paris.
Roadblock//حاجز
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Country: France, Lebanon
Director: Dahlia Nemlich
Length: 16 mins
Synopsis: Beirut 2019 – During the Revolution. On her way back from a protest, Farah, a young Lebanese woman and her French – Lebanese boyfriend, Anthony, are stopped at a roadblock held by two armed militiamen who have a bone to pick with Farah.
Nightfall//الشفق
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Country: France
Director: Roméo De Melo Martins
Length: 26 mins
Synopsis: On the 13th of July 2011, during a demonstration against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, the Syrian authorities arrest several intellectuals and artists. Among them, Ali Abou Georges, theater actor. After a night of interrogation, he is taken to the office of General Omar, the head of the Syrian intelligence service.
The Laughing Woo Woo
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Country: United States
Director: Amir Youssef
Length: 17 mins
Synopsis: A proof-of-concept short film about Simsim – a lonesome Egyptian asylee in San Francisco with a wooingly contagious laugh, is battling his bizarre misfortunes to follow immigration procedures, and his only hope is his greedy lawyer Dale.
5:1
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Country: Canada
Director: Sara Ben-Saud
Length: 8 mins
Synopsis: Filmmaker Ben-Saud takes us into her family home, where she was confined with her parents and adult brother and sister during the early months of the lockdown, to experience the sometimes funny and sometimes challenging realities of pandemic coexistence.”
Co-presented with Canadian Arab Institute
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Abu Saddam//أبو صدام
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Country: Egypt
Director: Nadine Khan
Length: 89 mins
Synopsis: Experienced truck driver Abu Saddam gets a transportation mission on the North Coast road after he stopped working for years. He decides that he wants to complete his mission perfectly to complement his working reputation, but as he faces a small situation on the road things start to get out of control.
Co-presented with Egypt Migrations
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
A Second Life//ڨدحة
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Country: Tunisia
Director: Aniss Lassoued
Length: 92 mins
Synopsis: Gadeha (12) happens one day to be the victim of a car accident. He undergoes surgery. Penniless, his mother, Borkana, is helped by Malika and Moez, a benevolent couple that offers to pay for the hospital fees and provides the destitute family with a roof. Gadeha meets Oussama, Malika and Moez’s child (11) who is recovering from a kidney transplant. A strong friendship is made between the two boys. But Gadeha finds out haphazardly the secret of his family’s new standard of living. He is devastated.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
A Toi
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Country: Lebanon
Director: Nour Azar Chami
Length: 11 mins
Synopsis: A 12 year old boy develops a spiritual relationship with his dead grandpa.
Tala’Vision//تالافيزيون
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Country: Germany, Jordan
Director: Murad Abu Eisheh
Length: 27 mins
Synopsis: Trapped in a war ridden reality, with the hope of one day playing in the neighborhood’s football field, 8 year old Tala finds solace and freedom in a forbidden television. However, the secret TV becomes a matter of life and death.
Aïcha’s Dress//روبة عيشة
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Country: Tunisia
Director: Mouhamed Saïed
Length: 28 mins
Synopsis: Saber, a young 14-year-old who lives in precariousness, manages as best he can to provide for himself and his sick mother Aïcha.
Son Of The Streets
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Country: Palestine
Director: Mohammed Almughanni
Length: 33 mins
Synopsis: The film depicts the daily life of Khodor, a 13-year-old orphan whose relatives struggle to get him an ID card that proves his existence and gives him the right to education, health care and freedom of movement outside the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut, Lebanon. During the process, long hidden family secrets are revealed.
Co-presented with Toronto Palestine Film Festival
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualDajla: Cinema and Oblivion
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Country: Spain
Director: Arturo Dueñas
Length: 15 mins
Synopsis: The rocky desert in southwestern Algeria is the temporary home of about 150,000 refugees from Western Sahara. Goats grazing or the opening of a beauty salon are among the many scenes of everyday life of people who are eagerly awaiting the beginning of the film festival. The observational documentary captures the unwavering love of film in a place that the world has forgotten.
Cine-Ruins
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Country: Lebanon
Director: Oscar Debs
Length: 20 mins
Synopsis: A family rumor about an Egypt-based star’s kinship to the Debs family in El-Mina, Tripoli, led to revisiting the history of a specific deserted cinema theatre there and the family of its manager.
Searching for Amal//البحث عن أمل
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Country: Egypt
Director: Shehab Abd Al-hafez
Length: 30 mins
Synopsis: A grandson opens up old family photos to realize that there was always a picture of a girl hanging on the wall behind them, and now he sets upon a path of discovery.
Joe Buffalo
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Country: Canada
Director: Amar Chebib
Length: 16 mins
Synopsis: Joe Buffalo, an Indigenous skateboard legend and Indian Residential School survivor, must face his inner demons to realize his dream of turning pro.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm EDT
Paradise Theatre, 1006 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON M6H 1M2Screenings:
Virtual Voice
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Country: Sudan
Director: Suzannah Mirghani
Length: 7 mins
Synopsis: This is a satirical review of our times. Suzi doll is an ego-warrior. My online avatar, marching to the algorithms of social media. She is lit by temporary outrage. A trending indignation. A passion that is fashion. A politics of the popular. Her activism is abstract. Her help is hypothetical. We know many girls like Suzi, and many times we are her: vacuous virtual voices, echoing injustices.
Alia
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Country: France
Director: Zahra Berrada
Length: 26 mins
Synopsis: Ali, a young Moroccan emigrant, is torn between the conservative environment of his family and his passion for the cabaret where he cross-dresses at night to become Alia.
Blooming Dalia
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Country: France
Director: Holy Fatma
Length: 24 mins
Synopsis: Dalia (25), a french ex-reality TV starlet, is at her lowest point. Depressed and overweight, she tries to reconnect with her estranged mother, who still refuses to talk to her because of her seedy tabloid fodder past. Deeply hurt, Dalia accepts to be part of a new TV show booked by Coco, her agent, on the one condition that she loses weight. But as Coco strives to make her the IT-girl she once was, Dalia’s repressed Algerian origins resurface unexpectedly.
J’ai Le Cafard//بنت وردان
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Country: Kuwait
Director: Maysaa Almumin
Length: 14 mins
Synopsis: A woman in a downhearted mood struggles to keep up appearances in front of her chirpy and driven office colleagues. An encounter with a dying cockroach in the office toilet develops into an absurd friendship, becoming the comforting companionship she needs until she realizes its destructive effects on her life.
An Evening with Laila//سهرة مع ليلى
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Country: Kuwait
Director: Haya Alghanim
Length: 10 mins
Synopsis: A short documentary about the life and true story of Laila Abdulaziz, a pioneer of music in the Arabian Gulf and staple of Kuwaiti history who had a vision for the future that no one was ready for, not even herself.
Conversations with an Actress
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Country: Lebanon
Director: Estephan Khattar
Length: 13 mins
Synopsis: Throughout two consecutive summers, a director was documenting his conversations with an actress about Beirut, love, failure, and immigration without her knowing that her private chats and voice notes have been transformed into a film.
Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow//آخر أيّام رجل الغَد
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Country: Lebanon, Germany
Director: Fadi Baki
Length: 23 mins
Synopsis: A young filmmaker investigates the legend of Manivelle, an automaton gifted to Lebanon in 1945 that still haunts an abandoned mansion in Beirut. After being coaxed back out into the limelight, the people who knew him come forward to speak their mind, and the myth that Manivelle has constructed around himself begins to unravel. A science-fiction mockumentary out of Lebanon, Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow is a funny, sad and weird look at the life of the Middle East’s first and only living robot and the stories you won’t find in your history books.
Co-presented with Breakthroughs Film Festival
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Under The Concrete//تحت السموات و الأرض
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Country: Lebanon
Director: Roy Arida
Length: 79 mins
Synopsis: Beirut, Lebanon 2017. As the country trembles a man decides to attempt to break the world record of depth in deep diving.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Virtual Voice
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Country: Sudan
Director: Suzannah Mirghani
Length: 7 mins
Synopsis: This is a satirical review of our times. Suzi doll is an ego-warrior. My online avatar, marching to the algorithms of social media. She is lit by temporary outrage. A trending indignation. A passion that is fashion. A politics of the popular. Her activism is abstract. Her help is hypothetical. We know many girls like Suzi, and many times we are her: vacuous virtual voices, echoing injustices.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
You Resemble Me
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Country: France, Egypt, United States
Director: Dina Amer
Length: 90 mins
Synopsis: When the bond is broken between two sisters, a little girl transforms into someone new in the name of belonging and resistance. Director Dina Amer takes one of the darkest tales of our time, the story of Muslim terror in the West, and deconstructs it in a story about family, love, sisterhood, and fractured identity.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Mariam//مريم
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Country: Palestine
Director: Dana Durr
Length: 5 mins
Synopsis: After losing her precious paradise, Mariam undergoes a journey through her roots and history to find culture and continuity.
Nur El Qulub//نورالقلوب
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Country: Canada
Director: Sawsan Alsaraf
Length: 8 mins
Synopsis: Nur Al Qulub is an exploration of the spiritual dimension of shadow and light. Drawing from the director’s experiences as the end-of-life support person for many near and dear people in her life, this project seeks to ask questions about spiritual truth, transitions, and the unknown. Dwelling on the threshold of spaces of darkness leading to the light, shadow work and discomfort, and the material and the spiritual, Nur Al Qulub references AlSaraf’s deepest realizations around the meaning of life – and death.
The Song of Sin//نشيد الخطيئة
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Country: France
Director: Khalid Maadour
Length: 15 mins
Synopsis: The Song of Sin retraces the story of Sufunis and Youba, couple of Imediazens, a tribe of the rif located in the North East of Morocco. Poets and musicians, heirs to an ancestral art, they are ostracized by a society that is looking for itself. Much more than a love story, the story of a people, is played out on these windswept highlands, between resignation and combat.
Don’t Forget The Water//لا تنسى التسمية
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Country: Canada
Director: Christina Hajjar
Length: 5 mins
Synopsis: A phone conversation sets the diasporic table as a disembodied figure prepares Qahwah Arabi / Arabic Coffee. Here, the contradictions inherent in Google Translate’s instant camera feature are made visible through glitched mistranslations. Using these flaws as a prompt, the communication between a mother and a daughter considers ambiguity as a source of embodied knowledge.
CloseCall
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Country: Egypt, United States
Director: Amr El-Bayoumi, Matt Tsymbal
Length: 9 mins
Synopsis: An Egyptian-American businessman arrives in New York City to salvage a transaction that has his career hanging in the balance. Will a detour to the 9/11 Memorial jeopardize the deal?
Co-presented with Al Markaz.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Sandjak//سنجق
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Country: Lebanon
Director: Chantal Partamian
Length: 8 mins
Synopsis: Navigating three types of images, shot in three different periods, the film explores the poetics of haunting through compositions of images that create an entanglement between the past and the present. An intimate but detached voice, a little stoic even, speaking of countless losses. The repeated affirmation of belonging to a place that is no longer.
Galb’Echaouf//قلب الشوف
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Country: Morocco
Director: Abdessamad El Montassir
Length: 18 mins
Synopsis: While investigating on an event that profoundly changed the landscape of the Occidental Sahara, the filmmaker was faced with a silent entourage and parents who are haunted by this harsh socio-political history. He consequently focuses his attention on the landscape and plants in order to find elements that could answer and help to reconstruct this amnesia.
The Way Back//طريق العودة
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Country: Libya
Director: Malek Mohamed Elmaghrebi
Length: 18 mins
Synopsis: Tawergha is a village in the middle of northern Libya, during the events of the Libyan revolution on February 17, 2011, all those living in Tawergha were expelled until the announcement of reconciliation between the conflicting parties after seven years, but it seems that only declaring reconciliation is not enough until the population returns to settle again in Tawergha, and through the heroes of the story, Khairy, who decided to live in Tawergha again, and Salem, who is still not convinced to return.
Off-Season Tourists
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Country: Tunisia
Director: Maher Hasnaoui
Length: 30 mins
Synopsis: In 2010, after the state crisis in Ivory Coast, Hervé decides to leave his country. Once he arrives in Tunisia, he must face a reality he never imagined and dreaming of a better life becomes his daily challenge.
Warsha//ورشة
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Country: Lebanon
Director: Dania Bdeir
Length: 16 mins
Synopsis: A Syrian migrant working as a crane operator in Beirut volunteers to cover a shift on one of the most dangerous cranes, where he is able to find his freedom.
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Fighters
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Country: France
Director: Malika Hadjal
Length: 20 mins
Synopsis: Emma, a woman of 35 years old, beaten by her abusive husband, escapes her house during the night with her 5 years old daughter, CHLOE.
Osha//عوشة
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Country: United Arab Emirates
Director: Rasha Amer
Length: 15 mins
Synopsis: This short documentary follows a mother (Aysha) and daughter (Osha) as they travel through the desert hunting with falcons, the traditional Emirati method that has been passed down through the generations.
Ana Wa Enti (Me and You)//أنا و أنت
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Country: United States
Director: Alexandra Muhawi-Ho
Length: 17 mins
Synopsis: 33-year-old Amira struggles to find her place in between her Arab and American identities while living with and navigating her relationship with her culturally traditional, yet loving mother.
Tender Threads//حبال المودة
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Country: Morocco
Director: Ouijdane Khallid
Length: 24 mins
Synopsis: The routine of daily life between Radia and her mother generates an awful discomfort and becomes a major obstacle to Radia’s emotional future and her relationship with her mother. This monotony therefore cause an unexpected cleavage.
With Strings Attached
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Country: United Kingdom
Director: Alla Abdunabi
Length: 3 mins
Synopsis: The importance of women in this world is often neglected. This narrative stop-motion film explores the complexities of a relationship with a mother. The emphasis of a woman’s presence on a child’s growth is hidden between the lines of this short film. However, the connection must come to an end; after all, there are always strings attached.
Incurable
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Country: Iran
Director: Bahare Nikjoo
Length: 17 mins
Synopsis: In a southern region of Iran, a girl has been lost. Her brother and her sister in law are looking for her, but there is a mystery behind this.
Co-presented with MENA Film Festival
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Event Details
May 26, 2022
6:00 pm EDT
VirtualScreenings:
Elektra, My Love (Elektra, Ya Gharami)
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Country: Lebanon, Germany
Director: Hisham Bizri
Length: 89 mins
Synopsis: A kammerspiel-film set in the moody, cavernous ruin of the Piccadilly Theater, Beirut’s extravagant art palace destroyed after the Lebanese Civil War.
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Event Details
May 27, 2022
12:00 pm EDT
VirtualWatch
Arab filmmakers have always faced a multitude of challenges in producing their films. These challenges have only intensified with the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic and the escalation of conflict and crisis in the Arab region. Despite these challenges, the Arab film scene continues to grow and diversify with more and more filmmakers emerging with innovative works and even gaining international recognition.
This apparent contradiction is especially glaring in Lebanon — a country that is currently enduring one of the worst socioeconomic crises the world has seen since the mid-nineteenth century. Despite
that, Lebanon is still among the top nations in the region to produce acclaimed feature and short films. How do we account for this seeming inconsistency and what can we learn from it?During this panel, three Lebanese filmmakers will share their experiences of making feature films while enduring and witnessing the complete collapse of their country. How are the struggles that face these filmmakers reflected in the films themselves? More generally, how can a recognition of the realities that film production is grounded in nuance and reshape the understanding of the films we consume?
Moderator:
Zeina Tarraf, Assistant Professor, Media Studies, American University of Beirut
Zeina Tarraf is an assistant professor of media studies at the American University of Beirut where she teaches courses on Arab media and society, war and media, and visual culture. Her
current book project examines how public feelings are produced and circulated in Lebanon during moments of protracted national crisis. She is also working on a new book project that considers how film industries in the Arab world are positioned within transnational circuits of financing, production, and circulation.
Speakers:
Mounia Akl, Filmmaker
Mounia Akl is a director and writer from Lebanon living between Beirut and New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from ALBA and an MFA in Directing from Columbia University and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®. Her first feature film, Costa Brava Lebanon (Sundance Labs, Cannes Residency), premiered in 2021 at the Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival (Netpac Award) and BFI London Film Festival (Audience Award) amongst others. It was inspired by her short film Submarine (Official selection at the 69th Cannes Film Festival, TIFF 2016). Apart from directing, Mounia has also taught a lab in Directing at Columbia University, New York, and directing at the NHSI film summer institute at Northwestern University, Chicago. Mounia is currently developing new projects (TV and Film) between Paris, Beirut and LA where she also was recently a Ted Talk Women speaker.
Roy Arida, Filmmaker
Roy Arida is a director and producer. Born in Beirut, Roy studied cinema at la Fémis, Paris, in the directing department. Since he graduated, he has been pursuing his work as a director still in between France and Lebanon, with an equal interest for fiction and documentary In 2012, Roy founded STANK, a production house based in Paris. Roy has two films in this year’s Festival – Under the Concrete, which he directed; and Khamsin, which he produced.
Elie Khalifé, Filmmaker
Elie Khalifé is a Lebanese director, screenwriter and producer whose career spans over two decades and multiple award-winning projects. Elie studied film at the Geneva University of Art and Design (ESAV-HEAD). Lebanon is both the backdrop and inspiration to his work.
Elie’s body of work is primarily based on his own material and showcases his comedic streak with award-winning shorts like “Taxi Service” (1996), “Merci Natex” (1998) and his first feature “Yanoosak” (2010). Elie also directed “Single Married Divorced” (2015), a highly popular comedy. “State of Agitation” (2020) is his third feature film and the first in which he acts.
Event Details
May 28, 2022
7:30 pm EDT
Innis Town Hall Theatre, 2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto, ON M5S 1J5
Join us for a screening of “You Resemble Me” followed by a panel on “The Language of Belonging” where Jasmin Zine and Amir Al-Azraki will join Nehal El-Hadi in a moderated discussion exploring Islamophobia, radicalization, and barriers to belonging for Muslim youth in disapora.Screening:
You Resemble Me
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Country: France, Egypt, United States
Director: Dina Amer
Length: 90 mins
Synopsis: When the bond is broken between two sisters, a little girl transforms into someone new in the name of belonging and resistance. Director Dina Amer takes one of the darkest tales of our time, the story of Muslim terror in the West, and deconstructs it in a story about family, love, sisterhood, and fractured identity.
Panel:
The Language of Belonging
Moderator:
Nehal El-Hadi, Science + Technology Editor, The Conversation Canada
Nehal El-Hadi investigates the relationships between the body (racialised, gendered), place (urban, virtual), and technology (internet, health).
She completed a Ph.D. in Planning at the University of Toronto, where her research examined the relationships between user-generated content and everyday public urban life.
As a scholar, her hybrid digital/material research methods are informed by her training and experience as a science and environmental journalist.
Nehal advocates for the responsible, accountable, and ethical treatment of user-generated content in the fields of journalism, planning, and healthcare.
Her writing has appeared in academic journals, general scholarship publications, literary magazines, and several anthologies and edited collections.
Nehal is the Science+Technology Editor at The Conversation Canada, an academic news site, and Editor-in-Chief of Studio Magazine, a biannual print publication dedicated to contemporary Canadian craft and design. She currently holds a residency at Toronto’s Theatre Centre, where she is developing a live arts event that explores surveillance, privacy, and consent.
Nehal sits on the Board of Directors of FiXT POINT Arts & Media and Provocation Ideas Festival. She is a member of the Digital Communities Advisory Panel at the Centre for Free Expression. She was previously a Visiting Scholar at the City Institute at York University.
Speakers:
Jasmin Zine, Professor of Sociology and Religion & Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University
Jasmin Zine is a Professor of Sociology and Religion & Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. She served as a consultant on combating Islamophobia for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Council of Europe (COE), and the Office for the Democratic Institutions and Human Rights at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (ODHIR/OSCE). Her recent book: Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation (2022, McGill -Queens University Press) explores the experiences of the millennial generation of Canadian Muslim youth who came of age during the global war on terror and times of heightened anti-Muslim racism. She is author of a major report on the Canadian Islamophobia industry that examines the networks of hate and bigotry that purvey and monetize Islamophobia. She is a sought-after media commentator and has given numerous invited talks and keynotes in Istanbul, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, Madrid, Cordoba, Nairobi, Uppsala, as well as in Pakistan and across the U.S.
Amir Al-Azraki, playwright, literary translator, Assistant Professor at University of Waterloo
Amir Al-Azraki is an Arab-Canadian playwright, literary translator, Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures Program, at Renison University College, University of Waterloo. Among his plays are: Waiting for Gilgamesh: Scenes from Iraq, The Mug, and The Widow. Al-Azraki is the author of The Discourse of War in Contemporary Theatre (in Arabic), co-editor and co-translator of Contemporary Plays from Iraq, “A Rehearsal for Revolution”: An Approach to Theatre of the Oppressed (in Arabic), and co-editor and co-translator of Arabic poetry by female poets in Consequence, The Common, Poetry Foundation and Talking Writing. He is currently translating Representations of the Other: The Image of Black People in the Medieval Arab Imaginary by a Bahraini critic Nader Kadhim.
Co-presented with Provocation Ideas Festival
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May 28, 2022
10:00 am – 5:00 pm EDT
VirtualThe Accelerator pairs emerging Arab-Canadian filmmakers with emerging producers where they will attend an intensive day of workshops presented by industry professionals on: development, pitching and distribution.
Ten participants will be selected in total to form 5 teams – 5 directors, and 5 producers. Participants can either apply as a team comprised of a producer and a filmmaker, or they can apply individually and be partnered with someone. TAF will partner participants based on their applications detailing their experience, goals and content interests.
Speakers:
Sherien Barsoum
Christina Piovesan
Christina Piovesan is the founder and principal of First Generation Films, a film and tv production company based in Toronto. Past films include the Cannes Winner Amreeka directed by Cherien Dabis; The Whistleblower directed by Larysa Kondracki, Mouthpiece directed by Patricia Rozema, Paper Year, written and directed by Rebecca Addelman and American Woman directed by Semi Chellas which had its Canadian premiere as a Gala Presentation at TIFF 2019. Her collaboration with Elevation Productions, the production arm of Elevation Pictures, has Christina in post-production on The Exchange directed by Dan Mazer and French Exit directed by Azazel Jacobs. Most recently, Christina was producer on The Nest directed by Sean Durkin which had its premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
This program was made possible by the generous support of Ontario Creates
Event Details
May 29, 2022
12:00 pm EDT
Paradise Theatre, 1006 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, M6H 1M2
Join us for a screening of Canadian short films followed by a panel discussion around opportunities and challenges making films in Canada and beyond.Screenings:
Brown Bread & Apricots
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Country: Jordan, Canada
Director: Serene Husni
Length: 8 mins
Synopsis: In the absence of his parents, an unruly teenager is presented with a crucial test of character devised by his eldest sister. Instead of being punished for skipping school, he is entrusted with managing the family allowance for two weeks. To feed his siblings, he resorts to something he knew in his heart: in a Palestinian house, the pantry is never bare. Borrowing from classic elements of Palestinian storytelling—namely repetition, trickery, and an obsession with food—Brown Bread & Apricots is a story about a Palestinian family in exile.
Visions of Basra
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Country: Canada
Director: Noor Gatih
Length: 5 mins
Synopsis: Visions of Basra explores my mother’s fragmented memories of her homeland by exploring her photographs, colours and words. Each moving visual appears to be imperfect or out of focus the more detailed her recollections become.
Nur El Qulub//نورالقلوب
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Country: Canada
Director: Sawsan Alsaraf
Length: 8 mins
Synopsis: Nur Al Qulub is an exploration of the spiritual dimension of shadow and light. Drawing from the director’s experiences as the end-of-life support person for many near and dear people in her life, this project seeks to ask questions about spiritual truth, transitions, and the unknown. Dwelling on the threshold of spaces of darkness leading to the light, shadow work and discomfort, and the material and the spiritual, Nur Al Qulub references AlSaraf’s deepest realizations around the meaning of life – and death.
Don’t Forget The Water
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Country: Canada
Director: Christina Hajjar
Length: 5 mins
Synopsis: A phone conversation sets the diasporic table as a disembodied figure prepares Qahwah Arabi / Arabic Coffee. Here, the contradictions inherent in Google Translate’s instant camera feature are made visible through glitched mistranslations. Using these flaws as a prompt, the communication between a mother and a daughter considers ambiguity as a source of embodied knowledge.
Festina Lente
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Country: Canada
Director: Baya Medhaffar
Length: 21 mins
Synopsis: Combining two contradictory terms in a single phrase is called an oxymoron. Circumventing the obvious, shaking up the logic, proceeding in gusts, claiming the impossible, such is the method that Baya Medhaffar has chosen and, adopting an ancient motto, she makes it clear right from the title: “Make haste slowly”. There are several explanations for this speed proclaimed yet slowed all at once. Her film is mostly made of edited, assembled images from other films; thus, all the emergencies from other works reach a climax here, but as they overlap, they also call for their patient and detailed examination. The dishevelled editing is combined to a superimposition technique that makes scales collide, that associate separated figures and backgrounds, and that ties together in the same frame seemingly unrelated dynamics and lines of forces.
Panel:
Canadian Filmmakers Roundtable
Through this discussion, filmmakers will reflect on their creative journeys, opportunities and challenges making films in Canada and beyond.
Moderator:
Nashwa Lina Khan, Community Educator, Facilitator, and Researcher
Nashwa Lina Khan is a community educator, facilitator, and researcher. She is also a writer and poet and occasionally dabbles in installation and archive that uses narrative methodologies. She holds a Masters of Environmental Studies from York University with areas of concentration focused on narrative methodologies, community and public health, refugee, and forced migration studies and is currently a PhD student at York University in Environment and Urban Change. Her work has been published in a variety of places including Vice, Rewire, This Magazine, and The New York Times. She is the host and producer of two podcasts, Muslim Rumspringa and Habibti Please.
Speakers:
Sawsan Al Saraf, Filmmaker
Sawsan AlSaraf (Canadian, b. Iraq) is a visual and multimedia artist who lives and works in Montreal, Canada, AlSaraf has moved between the Middle East and North America since 1977. In her work, she draws her references from her life experiences as an expatriate Iraqi woman. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts rom Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and an MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Noor Gatih, Filmmaker
Noor Gatih is an Iraqi filmmaker and photographer based in Toronto. Her practice explores gender and generational patterns within family archives, film, and photography, and her work has been exhibited at Collusion Books, Gallery 44, Wave Art Collective and Gallery 1265. Recently, she was selected for a 2021 mentorship opportunity at Made In Her Image (hosted by Panavision), an organization that provides training and resources for women of colour pursuing a career in film production.
Christina Hajjar, Filmmaker
Christina Hajjar is a Lebanese artist, writer, and cultural worker based in Winnipeg on Treaty 1 Territory. Her practice considers intergenerational inheritance, domesticity, and place through diaspora, body archives, and cultural iconography. As a queer femme and first-generation subject, she is invested in the poetics of process, translation, and collaborative labour. Her work involves photography, film, performance, installation, publishing, and curation.
Hajjar was a recipient of the 2020 PLATFORM Photography Award and received an honourable mention for the 2021 Emerging Digital Artists Award. Her film Don’t Forget the Water won the Jury Award and the Audience Choice Award for Best Manitoba Short Film at Gimli Film Festival. Hajjar curates the SWANA Film Festival, presenting South West Asian and North African short films from around the world.
Hajjar is a Managing Editor of Carnation Zine (publishing art and writing on diaspora and displacement) and qumra journal (publishing reflections on world cinema). She is senior editor of Herizons (Canada’s foremost feminist magazine). She is the creator of Diaspora Daughter, Diaspora Dyke zine, which won Best Artzine at the Broken Pencil Zine Awards. Her writing has appeared in BlackFlash Magazine, C Magazine, The Uniter, CV2, Prairie Fire, and PaperWait.
Serene Husni, Filmmaker
Serene Husni is a documentarian, mentor, and Arabic-English translator. She holds an MFA in Documentary Media awarded with distinction from the Toronto Metropolitan University, and her directorial debut, “Zinco” (2013) won the “Audience Award for Best Short Documentary” from the Franco-Arab Film Festival. Her short, “Brown Bread & Apricots” (2021) won the Qayqub Award for “Best Canadian Short Film” from the Toronto Arab Film Festival. She is a co-writer and co-editor of the feature documentary “Eulogy for The Dead Sea” (2022), directed by Polina Teif, which traces the environmental impacts of settler colonialism on the disappearing body of water and the communities that live around it. She is currently in post production on her first feature documentary, a city symphony in four movements, titled “Jenin & the Colony”.
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Event Details
May 29, 2022
2:30 pm EDT
Paradise Theatre, 1006 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, M6H 1M2Screenings:
Strangers After Midnight
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Country: Syria
Director: Kinda Youssef
Length: 22 mins
Synopsis: Moments that unfolded late one night in the life of four Syrian refugees in Paris.
Roadblock//حاجز
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Country: France, Lebanon
Director: Dahlia Nemlich
Length: 16 mins
Synopsis: Beirut 2019 – During the Revolution. On her way back from a protest, Farah, a young Lebanese woman and her French – Lebanese boyfriend, Anthony, are stopped at a roadblock held by two armed militiamen who have a bone to pick with Farah.
Nightfall//الشفق
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Country: France
Director: Roméo De Melo Martins
Length: 26 mins
Synopsis: On the 13th of July 2011, during a demonstration against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, the Syrian authorities arrest several intellectuals and artists. Among them, Ali Abou Georges, theater actor. After a night of interrogation, he is taken to the office of General Omar, the head of the Syrian intelligence service.
The Laughing Woo Woo
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Country: United States
Director: Amir Youssef
Length: 17 mins
Synopsis: A proof-of-concept short film about Simsim – a lonesome Egyptian asylee in San Francisco with a wooingly contagious laugh, is battling his bizarre misfortunes to follow immigration procedures, and his only hope is his greedy lawyer Dale.
5:1
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Country: Canada
Director: Sara Ben-Saud
Length: 8 mins
Synopsis: Filmmaker Ben-Saud takes us into her family home, where she was confined with her parents and adult brother and sister during the early months of the lockdown, to experience the sometimes funny and sometimes challenging realities of pandemic coexistence.”
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Event Details
May 29, 2022
5:00 pm EDT
Paradise Theatre, 1006 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, M6H 1M2Screenings:
Abu Saddam//أبو صدام
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Country: Egypt
Director: Nadine Khan
Length: 89 mins
Synopsis: Experienced truck driver Abu Saddam gets a transportation mission on the North Coast road after he stopped working for years. He decides that he wants to complete his mission perfectly to complement his working reputation, but as he faces a small situation on the road things start to get out of control.
Co-presented with Egypt Migrations
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Event Details
May 29, 2022
7:30 pm EDT
Paradise Theatre, 1006 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, M6H 1M2The screening is followed by a conversation with Dalal Bizri.
Screenings:
Elektra, My Love (Elektra, Ya Gharami)
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Country: Lebanon, Germany
Director: Hisham Bizri
Length: 89 mins
Synopsis: A kammerspiel-film set in the moody, cavernous ruin of the Piccadilly Theater, Beirut’s extravagant art palace destroyed after the Lebanese Civil War.
Speaker:
Dalal Al-Bizri, Lebanese researcher and writer
Dalal Al-Bizri, Lebanese researcher and writer. She specializes in contemporary Islamic movements and authored several studies on women’s issues. She served as lecturer in Political Sociology at the Lebanese University and spent ten years as researcher in Egypt.
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