“The cats, the sea, and everything in between.” + “The Silence They Taught Us” + Filmmaker Q&A
PANEL / SCREENING
Join us for screenings of documentary short “The Silence They Taught Us” and feature “The cats, the sea, and everything in between.” followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
The Silence They Taught Us
The Silence They Taught Us is an autobiographical documentary short following Paula, a Palestinian-Canadian professional in Toronto, as she confronts the cost of silence in the face of anti-Palestinian racism. The film explores the systematic suppression and backlash faced by Palestinians and their allies in Canada, revealing how an environment of fear has been cultivated to silence voices, particularly in professional spaces, with the threat of lost livelihoods weaponized against Palestinians in exchange for silence and compliance.
The cats, the sea, and everything in between.
Documentary filmmaker Karel Malkoun comes from Lebanon, but has been living in Canada for the past few years. In 2022, when the economic crisis in her native country was at its peak, she decided to visit her family there. She turned her short trip into a collage-like diary in which she reflects on her relationship with her homeland, which is in a state of protracted decay. The film is composed of spontaneous snapshots capturing the author’s stay, interspersed with inserted captions serving as personal, often poetically formulated comments and observations. As a result, the film does not hide its strongly subjective perspective, but at the same time builds on it to make an important statement that shows the transformation of Lebanese society in everyday details such as the appearance of the city itself or in the intimate sphere of the author’s family life. Malkoun has created an immediate, raw, and deliberately unsorted impression capturing the absurdity and suddenness of situations that took her by surprise as a native returning from abroad.
