The Arab Film Fest opens THIS WEEK! Do you have your tickets yet?
The fest takes place September 28–October 2, 2022 in hybrid format. The theme, Life in Diaspora, engages and interrogates SWANA diaspora as an experience and filmmaking practice.
Check out the in-person screening schedule and the virtual screening line up.
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| MEMORY BOX (DIR. JOANA HADJITHOMAS, KHALIL JOREIGE, 2021) // LEBANON
Maia, a single mother, lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter, Alex. On Christmas Eve, they receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, tapes, and photos Maia sent to her best friend from 1980’s Beirut. Maia refuses to open the box or confront its memories, but Alex secretly begins diving into it. Between fantasy and reality, Alex enters the world of her mother’s adolescence during the Lebanese civil war.
Opening Night Tickets: 9/28 at 7pm, Walker Art Center
+ Post-screening discussion w/ director
+ 5:30pm Opening Night Reception
Virtual Tickets
+ Don’t miss the free filmmaking workshop with Khalil Joreige on 9/27 |
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| FADIA’S TREE (DIR. SARAH BEDDINGTON, 2021) // LEBANON, PALESTINE, UK
While millions of birds migrate freely in the skies, Fadia, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, yearns for the ancestral homeland she is denied. She challenges the director, Sarah, to find an ancient mulberry tree that stands witness to her family’s existence.
This film screens in honor of the memory of Shireen Abu Akleh, made possible by the estate of Dr. Inaam Matar.
Free Screening: 9/29 at 4pm, Trylon Cinema
Virtual Tickets
+ Virtual Conversation w/ Fadia Loubani and Leila Awadallah |
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| MIGUEL’S WAR (DIR. ELIANE RAHEB, 2021) // LEBANON
Miguel’s War is a documentary film portrait of Michel Jleilaty, a gay man from Lebanon who has been living in Spain as an adult under the assumed name Miguel Alonso, as he revisits the childhood traumas that made him want to escape his homeland.
In-Person Tickets: 9/30 at 9pm, Trylon Cinema
Virtual Tickets |
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| MAY GOD BE WITH YOU (DIR. CLÉO COHEN, 2021) // ALGERIA, TUNISIA, FRANCE
Cléo wonders if she has to choose between being a Jewish and an Arab woman. She pays visits, again and again, to her four grandparents, Jews from Algeria and Tunisia, exiled in France in the 1960s. She is determined to confront them with the meaning of these two identities she inherited from them. With humor and self-mockery, she questions the contradictions and the un-thoughts, staging the many different versions of her constantly rewritten family history.
In-Person Tickets: 10/1 at 3pm, Trylon Cinema
+ Post-screening discussion w/ director
Virtual Tickets |
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| MARINER OF THE MOUNTAINS (DIR. KARIM AÏNOUZ, 2021) // ALGERIA, BRAZIL
In January 2019, filmmaker Karim Aïnouz decides to take a boat across the Mediterranean and embark on his first journey to Algeria. Accompanied by his camera and the memory of his mother, Iracema, Aïnouz provides a detailed account of the journey to his father’s homeland. The film follows a winding path through languages, memories, relatives, and histories, all the while interweaving the present, past, and future.
In-Person Tickets: 10/1 at 5pm, Trylon Cinema
Virtual Tickets |
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