Country: Palestine, Canada, Jordan
Director: Annie Sakkab
Length: 20 mins
Synopsis: The Poem We Sang is a 20-minute, colour and black and white, experimental documentary that meditates on love and longing – the love of one’s family and the longing for one’s home, contemplated through overcoming the trauma of loss of family home and of forced migration, transforming lifelong regrets into a healing journey of creative catharsis and bearing witness.
FILMS//أفلام
The Poem We Sang//غنينا قصيدة
The Poet and the Swan//الشاعر و البجعة
Country: Syria
Director: Ayham Jabr
Length: 41 mins
Synopsis: In a parallel and imagined world, a revolution has triumphed. A revolution based and fuelled by hatred and ignorance, in all countries of Asia, the time of Asyatopia. The dystopian short film is inspired by the writings of George Orwell and the poems of Nizar Qabbani. The events of the film take place in a country in Asia after the victory of a black revolution – in it, thinking and feeling was forbidden, war ragged on, permanent revolutionary censorship, manipulation of the masses … and lies. The life of the film’s protagonist is turned upside down … after he receives a paper written on it one word … a word that can cause him to disappear from the face of the world.
The Poetess//الشاعرة
Country: Germany
Director: Stefanie Brockhaus & Andreas Wolff
Length: 89 mins
Synopsis: Imagine a European TV channel attracting millions of viewers across countries with poetry readings. This is exactly what Abu Dhabi TV has managed to do for a decade with the show Million’s Poet. After accusing extremists on stage, Hissa Hilal, a Saudi woman, who was shrouded in an abaya – a black cloak – and a niqab, received death threats. And the attention of the West. The German filmmaker Stefanie Brockhaus saw a picture of her in the New York Times and travelled with Andy Wolff to Abu Dhabi a few days later to accompany Hilal at the finals of Million’s Poet.
The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry//البحر الأحمر يبكي
Country: Jordan
Director: Faris Alrjoob
Length: 21 mins
Synopsis: Wandering through desolate bars, hotels, and offices, Ida attempts to feel Ismail’s presence one last time and to say goodbye.
The Return of Osiris//عودة اوزيريس
Country: Palestine
Director: Essa Grayeb
Length: 14 mins
Synopsis: On June 9, 1967, Egyptian President at the time, Gamal Abdel Nasser appeared on television and radio to inform the Egyptian citizens of their country’s defeat. During the speech, he also announced his resignation. For many, Nasser’s speech was the first hint at the full scope of loss and disillusionment with the pan-Arab vision he led. The film weaves together dozens of scenes that feature the speech from Egyptian films and television series produced between 1972-2016. The found footage excerpts were edited to reconstruct Nasser’s speech of resignation according to the original text.
The Skates//Les Patins
Country: Canada
Director: Halima Ouardiri
Length: 13 mins
Synopsis: Mina loves to skate. Today, her father, recently divorced from her mother, accompanies her to her first figure skating lesson. An ordinary day if something hadn’t happened to the skates.
The Soil and the Sea//بحر و تراب
Country: Lebanon
Director: Daniele Rugo
Length: 74 mins
Synopsis: In Lebanon there are more than 100 untouched mass graves dating back from the Civil War, and thousands of families awaiting a missing relative or at least a bone to bury The Soil and the Sea unveils the violence lying beneath a garden, a school, a cafe, a hotel, and other unremarkable landscapes.
The Song of Sin//نشيد الخطيئة
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.
The Sparrow//العصفور
Countries: Palestine, Austria
Director: Nasri Hajaj
Length: 14 mins
Synopsis: Based on true stories, The Sparrow, tells a story of life under dictatorship which can be anywhere and anytime. An Arab intellectual has been imprisoned for many years. One night while serving his unlimited period he is asked by the prison warden to tell stories to a five-year-old child in one of the neighboring cells. There he meets the mother of the child, born in prison. Meant to be a perfidious torture by the prison warden, he faces the challenge of how to tell a story to a child that has never seen the sun.
The Tedious Tour of M//جولة ميم المملة
Country: Egypt
Director: Hend Bakr
Length: 76 mins
Synopsis: A peanuts street vendor who turned into one of the stars of the modern history of Egyptian literature in the sixties, comes back to his hometown and cocoons for 30 years. He claims that he was doomed to stop writing forever.
The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni//اختفاءات سعاد حسني الثلاثة
Country: Lebanon, France
Director: Rania Stephan
Length: 70 mins
Synopsis: The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni is a rapturous elegy to a rich and versatile era of film production in Egypt which has lapsed today, through the work of one of its most revered actress and star: Soad Hosni, who from the early 1960 into the 90s, embodied the modern Arab woman in her complexity and paradoxes.
The Tomb//الضريح
Country: Sudan
Director: Eltayeb Mahdi
Length: 17 mins
Synopsis: The Tomb tells the story of a man who claims to be able to heal people.
The Unknown Saint//سيد المجهول
Country: Morocco
Director: Alaa Eddine Aljem
Length: 126 mins
Synopsis: Amine steals a big bag of money and escapes into the hills with the police hot on his trail. Before he is arrested, he digs a grave to bury the cash and disguises it as a modest tomb. Years later, Amine is released from prison and sets off to find his money. In the meantime, a religious shrine has been built directly over the place he buried his cash. The mausoleum honours an unknown saint from the region whose tomb was recently discovered. Down the hill from the resting place of the “The Unknown Saint”, a new village subsists on the pilgrims who travel from far and wide to visit the mausoleum. Amine settles into the village and begins plotting a way in. But with the loot now hidden in a holy place, retrieving it suddenly becomes much more complicated.
The Way Back//طريق العودة
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.
The Window//ما بعد آب
Country: Lebanon
Director: Sarah Kaskas
Length: 16 mins
Synopsis: A year after Beirut’s port explosion, Basma and Mariam reunite in their old bedroom. Surrounded by a view of the port’s remains, the two women attempt to resolve their shared trauma and broken relationship.
To A Land Unknown
Country: Palestine, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia
Director: Mehdi Fleifel
Length: 105 mins
Synopsis: Chatila and Reda are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens. But when Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his dangerous drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in an effort to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.
To My Father//إلى أبي
Country: Palestine
Director: Abdel Salam Shehada
Length: 53 mins
Synopsis: “Those were days when people prettier, when eyes were filled with colour, even in black and white. What has changed – the camera, or the eye?” asks Abdel Salam Shehadah’s poetic homage to the studio photographers of the 1950’s – 70’s. Set partly in a refugee camp in Rafah, the film looks back at fifty years of Palestinian and Arab history, told through the photographs, reportage and the voices of these photographers today.
Towards the Sun//نحو الشمس
Country: Canada, Lebanon
Director: Nour Ouayda
Length: 17 mins
Synopsis: You are now in the main hall of the National Museum in Beirut. A guard reminds you that you are encouraged to touch the archeological objects. A voice in your headset suggests that you lick the stone. You are now facing a hole in the wall on the lower left corner of a mosaic. The voice in your headset indicates that it was made by a sniper. Out of curiosity, you dial 1-9-9-1 to listen to the rest of the story.
Traces//آثار
Country: Canada, Lebanon
Director: Chantal Partamian
Length: 9 mins
Synopsis: In the midst of the rubble of a torn building, a reel of film.
Un Passage entre Deux Points
Country: Tunisia
Director: Lamis Souliman
Length: 10 mins
Synopsis: In a confrontation structure between emotional and spatial alienation, out of a party full with tipsy attendees, an alienated girl fleeing through a path hidden between two stopped points in ‘Time’. She takes her journey moving on the very fine line between the outer reality and a parallel universe. Through the mental sounds and expressive movements of a girl who travels in a circular path between the real world and the self-realm, the film embodies images of optional and compulsory isolation within the life of an expatriate person, in deconstructing for the meanings of fulfilled existence and residential affiliation