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.
FILMS//أفلام
Joe Buffalo
Juha the Whale
Country: Canada
Director: Karam Masri
Synopsis: Juha the Whale is a short coming-of-age fiction film that explores the isolation a refugee mother and her young daughter face as they await the status of their claimant hearing in Toronto, Canada.
Khamsin
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.
Killing Bagheera//بطلان
Country: Germany
Director: Muschirf Shekh Zeyn
Length: 13 mins
Synopsis: Alan and Bekes are refugees and want to enter Europe. This simple premise forms the narrative for a claustrophobic and intense drama surrounding friendship, courage, dreams and how the other half life.
Kingdom of Strangers//مملكة الغرباء
Country: Egypt, United States
Director: Randa Ali
Length: 15 mins
Synopsis: On the Pacific coast of Los Angeles, Ali and Yaffa struggle to remember the Arab Mediterranean cities they have left behind.
Landing//هبوط
Country: Lebanon, Tunisia, Canada, Turkey
Director: Chantal Partamian
Length: 3 mins
Synopsis: To be queer and to linger between states, between nation-states. A poetical essay that very briefly explores fragments of a long distance relationship, when two lovers meet, when they are caught in transit.
Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow//آخر أيّام رجل الغَد
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.
Left Right//يسار يمين
Country: Tunisia
Director: Moutii Dridi
Length: 23 mins
Synopsis: Yassine, 7 years old, left handed, his father is forcing him to use his right hand.
Leila and the Cigarette//ليلى و السيجارة
Country: Canada, Lebanon
Director: Leah Manasseh
Length: 15 mins
Synopsis: In 2011, Leah decided to go to Lebanon to film with her grandmother. Two weeks after the shoot, her grandmother died of metastatic lung cancer. It took her 12 years to get the courage to revisit their last conversations.
Life on the CAPS
Country: Morocco
Director: Meriem Bennani
Length: 76 mins
Synopsis: Life on the CAPS is a trilogy of short film by Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani. Set in a supernatural, dystopian future, Life on the CAPS (short for “capsule”) features a fictional island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. In the world of the CAPS, teleportation has replaced air travel, and displaced populations utilize this mode of transportation to cross oceans and borders.
Light upon Light//نور على نور
Country: Egypt
Director: Christian Suhr
Length: 78 mins
Synopsis: A philosophical field trip from Cairo, along the Nile and into the desert in search for what light means as a religious concept in post-revolutionary Egypt.
Locus Cordis
Country: Syria
Director: Alhasan Yousef
Length: 19 mins
Synopsis: Occupied by Israel in 1967, the Syrian Golan has a military border running through it, which families “cross” by shouting to their loved ones. From his European exile, anxiety-ridden Alhasan Yousef attempts to break free from his inner isolation with this exploration of the power of sound, in an effort to reconnect with his lost country from afar.
Lower Ground//الطابق السفلي
Country: Lebanon, United Kingdom
Director: Firas Itani
Length: 13 mins
Synopsis: When a concierge begins to prepare dinner for his nephew, a resident demands his immediate assistance. The concierge finds himself torn between attending to his employer’s never-ending requests and the boy’s growing hunger. Left unsupervised, the boy sets out to make his dinner, ultimately taking a drastic turn.
Mandoob//مندوب الليل
Country: Saudi Arabia
Director: Ali Kalthami
Length: 110 mins
Synopsis: A mentally fragile man working as a night courier gets caught up in an illegal alcohol ring.
Maradona’s Legs//اجرين مارادونا
Countries: Palestine, Germany
Director: Firas Khoury
Length: 20 mins
Synopsis: During the 1990 World Cup, two young Palestinian boys are looking for “Maradona’s legs”; the last missing sticker that they need in order to complete their world cup album and win a free Atari. 
Mariam//مريم
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.
Mediterranean Fever//حمى البحر المتوسط
Country: Palestine, France, Germany, Qatar, Cyprus
Director: Maha Haj
Length: 108 mins
Synopsis: Waleed develops a close relationship with his neighbor, a small-time crook with an ulterior plot in mind that leads them into a journey of dark encounters.
Memory is a Dying Horse
Country: Canada
Director: Samer Najari
Length: 28 mins
Synopsis: Trying to freeze time is an illusion. Whatever we do, life unfolds in one direction. Memory is a dying horse is yet another desperate attempt to challenge the irreversibility of time. A sparse, raw, somehow childish collage of reminiscences filmed on Super 8 between Syria, France and Canada. The whole is accompanied by musical explorations.
Memory’s Consolation//في عزاء الذاكرة
Country: Lebanon
Director: Chadi Hazime
Length: 18 mins
Synopsis: After Hilton’s door had been closed for many years, the light was finally seen when the director decided to send a public invitation to watch his Big Show inside the ancient art shelter “”Hilton Cinema – Al-Mreijeh District””. As soon as the show began, he was surprised by another realistic show, to explore the past and history of Hilton Cinema, which was the silent witness to many of the harsh circumstances that occurred in this region
Mutts (Clebs)//كلب
Country: Canada, Morocco
Director: Halima Ouardiri
Length: 18 mins
Synopsis: The animals’ brown, beige, white and black coats blend into the ochre earth and sunbaked walls. After the calm of rest hour, a deafening cacophony breaks out at feeding time, as the dogs bark excitedly. In a stray-dog refuge in Agadir, Morocco, more than 750 animals find help and protection while awaiting adoption. Each day is the same as the last, the only excitement provided by mealtime. Empathetic and alert to subtleties of light and texture, Halima Ouardiri observes the rhythm of the animals’ lives, their suspended existence paralleling the far more tragic waiting endured by millions of human beings in search of a new home.