Movie: No Other Land: SIFF
2025-05-10 16:30 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel’s occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight.

Director:Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Country:Palestine, Norway
Running Time:95 min.
Producer:Fabien Greenberg, Bård Kjøge Rønning
Cinematographers:Rachel Szor
Editors:Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Music:Julius Pollux Rothlaender
Language:Arabic, Hebrew, English
US Distributor:Cintetic Handling
International Sales:Autlook

TICKETS
Other showtimes:

SATURDAY, MAY 10, 2025, SIFF Cinema Uptown

4:30 PM7:30 PM

SUNDAY, MAY 11, 2025, SIFF Cinema Uptown

4:30 PM7:30 PM

Movie: No Other Land: SIFF
2025-05-10 19:30 - 21:30 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel’s occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight.

Director:Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Country:Palestine, Norway
Running Time:95 min.
Producer:Fabien Greenberg, Bård Kjøge Rønning
Cinematographers:Rachel Szor
Editors:Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Music:Julius Pollux Rothlaender
Language:Arabic, Hebrew, English
US Distributor:Cintetic Handling
International Sales:Autlook

TICKETS
Other showtimes:

SATURDAY, MAY 10, 2025, SIFF Cinema Uptown

7:30 PM

SUNDAY, MAY 11, 2025, SIFF Cinema Uptown

4:30 PM7:30 PM

Movie: No Other Land: SIFF
2025-05-11 16:30 - 18:30 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel’s occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight.

Director:Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Country:Palestine, Norway
Running Time:95 min.
Producer:Fabien Greenberg, Bård Kjøge Rønning
Cinematographers:Rachel Szor
Editors:Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Music:Julius Pollux Rothlaender
Language:Arabic, Hebrew, English
US Distributor:Cintetic Handling
International Sales:Autlook

TICKETS
Other showtimes:

SUNDAY, MAY 11, 2025, SIFF Cinema Uptown

7:30 PM

Movie: The Encampments
2025-05-11 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-05-11 20:00 - 22:00, 2025-05-12 16:30 - 18:30, 2025-05-14 16:30 - 18:30 | The Beacon, 4405 Rainier Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98118, United States
THE ENCAMPMENTS follows student organizers at some of the world’s most prestigious universities as they take a historic stand against their institutions’ investments in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, igniting one of the largest student movements in history which continues to have far-reaching effects on US and world policies today.
Filmed on the ground and in real-time as these events were unfolding, THE ENCAMPMENTS features detained student activist Mahmoud Khalil and takes viewers inside America’s student uprising with incredible intimacy and urgency. Professors, whistleblowers from inside Ivy League administrations, and student activists shed light on a moment that captivated the nation’s attention and continues to make headlines today.
“What makes THE ENCAMPMENTS artistically triumphant is its sense of contemporary and historical detail, owed to both footage shot by the filmmakers, as well as by the protesters themselves. In the process, co-directors Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman craft a work of cinema that’s as rigorously journalistic in its arguments as it is nakedly sentimental.” – IndieWire
“This is more than a student protest—it’s a generational struggle for justice. Students have always led the charge for justice, from the sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement to the campus protests against South African apartheid. The encampments that started at Columbia are part of that legacy, inspiring millions of people around the world. The film ensures the students in US and Gaza are heard, their actions are remembered, and the fight for Palestinian liberation continues.” – Macklemore
“Khalil remains detained at an ICE facility in Louisiana amid a legal battle to prevent his deportation from the U.S. after the Trump administration ordered his removal… The legal challenge to Khalil might ultimately come down to the Supreme Court, which would decide how far the secretary of state can determine whether a permanent resident can be removed for speech.” – Axios

Movie: No Other Land: SIFF
2025-05-11 19:30 - 21:30 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel’s occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight.

Director:Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Country:Palestine, Norway
Running Time:95 min.
Producer:Fabien Greenberg, Bård Kjøge Rønning
Cinematographers:Rachel Szor
Editors:Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Music:Julius Pollux Rothlaender
Language:Arabic, Hebrew, English
US Distributor:Cintetic Handling
International Sales:Autlook

Online Premier of Echos of Home (Live YouTube Screening)
2025-05-12 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual
The Palestinian American Community Center (PACC) is documenting the raw, unfiltered stories of four Palestinian-American families navigating the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Directed by Shahed Khaddash, Echos from Home is a critical, real-time record of resilience, loss, and survival. These stories reflect the painful reality of thousands of Palestinian families separated by borders, politics, and war. The first episode of this docu-series starring Dina Massoud, captures the harrowing reality of leaving behind the only home you’ve ever known, enduring forced separation from family, and witnessing the unimaginable loss of loved ones before your eyes.

Screening and Discussion: The Land Speaks Arabic
2025-05-17 15:00 - 17:00 | Liberation Center, 606 MAYNARD AVE S, Seattle, WA
Join us for a screening and discussion of The Land Speaks Arabic (2007) on Saturday to commemorate 77 years of Nakba.
This documentary brings together rarely seen footage of Palestine before 1948 along with historical research, eyewitness accounts, testimonials, historical documents, and more to detail pre-1948 Palestine and the early planning and work that gave birth to Zionism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 that has come to be known as the Nakba.
Join us as we watch this documentary together and have a discussion together following it.
📅 SATURDAY, MAY 17
🕢 3 PM STARTING PROGRAM
📍LIBERATION CENTER – 606 MAYNARD AVE S, SEATTLE

Movie: From Ground Zero
2025-05-18 12:30 - 14:00 | Vashon Theater, 17723 Vashon Highway SW, Vashon, WA, 98070
Shortlisted for Best International Feature for the 2025 Academy Awards, FROM GROUND ZERO is an anthology project comprised of 22 short films created by filmmakers from Gaza. Launched by renowned Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi, the initiative was created during the current 2023/2024 conflict and aims to provide a platform for young Palestinian artists to express themselves through their craft.
Each film, ranging in length from three to six minutes, presents a unique perspective on the current reality in Gaza. The project captures the diverse experiences of life in the Palestinian enclave, including the challenges, tragedies, and moments of resilience faced by its people. Using a mix of genres including fiction, documentary, docu-fiction, animation, and experimental cinema, From Ground Zero presents a rich diversity of stories that reflect the sorrow, joy, and hope inherent in Gazan life.
Despite harsh filming conditions, Gaza’s vibrant artistic scene shines through this stunning anthology film, which offers an intimate and powerful portrait of daily life in modern-day Palestine – and the enduring spirit of its people.
In Arabic with English subtitles.
“The fact that this film even exists seems miraculous… [From Ground Zero] aims to humanize, to empathize, to go beyond the headlines and geopolitics. It aims to convey the hopes and dreams of everyday people, which persist even in dire circumstances.” Jennifer Green, Alliance of Women Film Journalists
“A powerful cry to the world that these filmmakers, collaborators, and people walking in the background are still there, still living under worsening conditions, and still need help. From Ground Zero is an unforgettable exhibition of the human spirit.” Monica Castillo, RogerEbert.com

Seattle International Film Festival: Balconettes
2025-05-18 21:00 - 23:00 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!

While perhaps best known for her understated yet powerful performances in Portrait of a Lady on Fire and TÀR, Noémie Merlant showcases her equally striking talent for the WTF (weird, titillating, and fascinating) both in front of and behind the camera with her sizzling sophomore feature as director. In the thick of a near-apocalyptic heat wave in Marseille, we are introduced to our trio of cohabitating bosom buddies: neurotic, sexually frustrated writer Nicole (Sanda Codrenau), free-spirited camgirl Ruby (Souhelia Yacoub) – actress of Tunisian descent, and Élise (Merlant), an actress rapidly reaching her boiling point. A chance encounter with the brooding artist on the balcony across the way rapidly spirals into a bloody affair that threatens to haunt the girls forever—possibly literally. What begins as a sexy, sun-drenched romp reveals itself to be a blood-drenched, searing takedown of rape culture, and an equally tough and tender look at the necessity of female friendship. With this bombastic, hilarious, and heart-rending film, Merlant cements herself as not only a face, but a singular voice in contemporary cinema across the globe.

Other Showtimes:

MONDAY, MAY 19, 2025

SIFF Cinema Downtown
3:15 PM

Seattle International Film Festival: Balconettes
2025-05-19 15:15 - 17:15 | SIFF Cinema Downtown, 2100 4th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98121
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!

While perhaps best known for her understated yet powerful performances in Portrait of a Lady on Fire and TÀR, Noémie Merlant showcases her equally striking talent for the WTF (weird, titillating, and fascinating) both in front of and behind the camera with her sizzling sophomore feature as director. In the thick of a near-apocalyptic heat wave in Marseille, we are introduced to our trio of cohabitating bosom buddies: neurotic, sexually frustrated writer Nicole (Sanda Codrenau), free-spirited camgirl Ruby (Souhelia Yacoub) – actress of Tunisian descent, and Élise (Merlant), an actress rapidly reaching her boiling point. A chance encounter with the brooding artist on the balcony across the way rapidly spirals into a bloody affair that threatens to haunt the girls forever—possibly literally. What begins as a sexy, sun-drenched romp reveals itself to be a blood-drenched, searing takedown of rape culture, and an equally tough and tender look at the necessity of female friendship. With this bombastic, hilarious, and heart-rending film, Merlant cements herself as not only a face, but a singular voice in contemporary cinema across the globe.

Seattle International Film Festival: Khartoum
2025-05-19 21:30 - 23:30 | AMC Pacific Place, 600 Pine St suite 400, Seattle, WA, 98101, United States
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
What begins as a street-level documentary of five ordinary lives in Khartoum—a civil servant, a tea vendor, a resistance volunteer, and two young bottle collectors—evolves into a radically inventive chronicle of a city at the edge of collapse. Shot on donated iPhones by four Sudanese filmmakers working alongside British director Phil Cox, production was interrupted when war erupted in April 2023. The filmmakers fled Sudan and regrouped in Nairobi, where they transformed the project using green screen re-enactments, animation, and dreamlike visual reconstructions.
The film’s five interwoven stories bear witness to lives disrupted by conflict but never reduced by it. A mother sings lullabies to shield her daughter; two boys flee militias on the back of an invisible lion; a government worker hides from a regime unraveling around him. Through surreal vignettes and raw detail, Khartoum refuses the distancing lens of crisis coverage.
So while Khartoum began as a vérité documentary shot in Sudan, it became a diasporic production: completed in exile, shaped by displacement, and creatively reassembled across borders. A collaborative act of remembrance and resistance, it is not simply about a city under siege—it is made by those who fled it, carrying its stories with them.
Other Showtimes:

WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 2025 – AMC Pacific Place

1:30 PM

Seattle International Film Festival: Khartoum
2025-05-21 13:30 - 15:30 | AMC Pacific Place, 600 Pine St suite 400, Seattle, WA, 98101, United States
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
What begins as a street-level documentary of five ordinary lives in Khartoum—a civil servant, a tea vendor, a resistance volunteer, and two young bottle collectors—evolves into a radically inventive chronicle of a city at the edge of collapse. Shot on donated iPhones by four Sudanese filmmakers working alongside British director Phil Cox, production was interrupted when war erupted in April 2023. The filmmakers fled Sudan and regrouped in Nairobi, where they transformed the project using green screen re-enactments, animation, and dreamlike visual reconstructions.
The film’s five interwoven stories bear witness to lives disrupted by conflict but never reduced by it. A mother sings lullabies to shield her daughter; two boys flee militias on the back of an invisible lion; a government worker hides from a regime unraveling around him. Through surreal vignettes and raw detail, Khartoum refuses the distancing lens of crisis coverage.
So while Khartoum began as a vérité documentary shot in Sudan, it became a diasporic production: completed in exile, shaped by displacement, and creatively reassembled across borders. A collaborative act of remembrance and resistance, it is not simply about a city under siege—it is made by those who fled it, carrying its stories with them.

Seattle International Film Festival: Happy Holidays
2025-05-21 20:30 - 22:30 | SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St, Seattle, 98109
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
Oscar® winner Scandar Copti (Ajami) is back with a new film about a middle-class Arab family in Israel and the impact of the country’s divisions on every aspect of their lives, mundane and momentous alike.
Fouad’s business is in trouble, which has plunged him into debt. This has major implications for his wife, Hanan, a woman very invested in maintaining the family’s social position, especially in anticipation of their elder daughter Leila’s upcoming wedding. Son Rami has a different kind of problem. His Jewish Israeli girlfriend is pregnant, but how would they raise a child in a country where their relationship must be kept secret? This question takes on a new urgency when the couple become the object of mysterious threats. Meanwhile, younger daughter Fifi has a secret of her own. After a minor car accident, she ends up in the hospital where her medical records, including her sexual history, come to light, causing further upheaval for the family and Fifi herself.
This ensemble of characters (mostly played by non-professional actors) and their stories create a rare portrait of Arab and Jewish lives in Israel and the effects of social, political, and religious divisions on every aspect of those lives, mundane and momentous alike.
Other Showtimes:

THURSDAY, MAY 22, 2025 AMC Pacific Place

1:00 PM

Seattle International Film Festival: Happy Holidays
2025-05-22 13:00 - 15:00 | AMC Pacific Place, 600 Pine St suite 400, Seattle, WA, 98101, United States

Seattle International Film Festival: Everybody Loves Touda
2025-05-22 15:15 - 17:15 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
In the latest film from Nabil Ayouch (Horses of God, SIFF 2014) co-written with his wife, director Maryam Touzani (The Blue Caftan, SIFF 2023), Touda dreams of being a sheikha, or traditional Moroccan folk singer. More than that, she is determined to be one, which is fortunate because the road ahead is a rocky one. A single mother with a young son to support, she sings at parties and in bars in her provincial town. But these opportunities are limited and fraught with risk, as her male audience’s “love” often shades into something more proprietary and threatening. She sets her sights on Casablanca and, leaving her son with her parents and ignoring the disapproval of her conservative brother, she heads to the big city. There Touda meets an older musician, a violinist who recognizes her ambition and her potential, and becomes a sort of mentor. With his help, she sets about to master the aita, a Moroccan musical genre rooted in poetry about the many struggles of life, from the personal to the political. As her singing improves, she can command higher fees and a more elite audience. But in a culture where female performers are as often eroticized and stigmatized as venerated, what does it really mean to be loved?

Other Showtimes:

TICKETS
Select showtime for pricing and tickets.

FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2025

SIFF Cinema Uptown
8:30 PM

Seattle International Film Festival: Moon
2025-05-22 20:00 - 22:00 | SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St, Seattle, 98109
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
Sarah (played by provocateur performance artist Florentina Holzinger) is an Austrian professional MMA fighter who has just lost a career-ending fight. She’s tough, with a face that shows her decades spent brawling, and she doesn’t hesitate to accept a job offer that her friends and family believe is too good to be true: A wealthy Jordanian man has hired Sarah to be a private trainer for his three sisters, who never leave the mansion without a bodyguard. But who is this family and why are they under constant surveillance?
Moon is Kurdish-Austrian filmmaker Kurdwin Ayub’s thrilling sophomore feature, following her award-winning debut film Sonne (SIFF 2023). Moon has already garnered several awards for its enthralling portrayal of a family in peril, shown through the hardened eyes of a woman trying to navigate a life she doesn’t want. Ayub doesn’t give easy answers in this tense film that asks, “How can you save others when you cannot save yourself?”
Other Showtimes:

FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2025, AMC Pacific Place

11:00 AM

Seattle International Film Festival: To A Land Unknown
2025-05-23 13:15 - 15:15 | AMC Pacific Place, 600 Pine St suite 400, Seattle, WA, 98101, United States
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
Mahdi Fleifel, who made the great documentary A World Not Ours (SIFF 2013) about the Ein el-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon, where his parents were born, returns to the Festival with his fiction debut, To a Land Unknown.
The refugees in this story have made out of their camp and travelled to Athens, where they are stranded en route to Germany. Chatila is clever and resourceful, and it falls to him to come up with a plan; Reda, his cousin, is sweet but hapless, owing in part to a weakness for drugs. To raise the money they need for fake passports, they resort to increasingly desperate crimes: stealing, sex work, human trafficking. To sustain themselves, they nurture the fantasy of the café they plan to open in Germany, where Chatila’s wife will cook, and they’ll make enough money to bring the rest of their family, currently stuck in the camp.
While films about refugees are not uncommon, what sets this film apart is the way the director puts us squarely in Chatila and Reda’s shoes as they try to figure out how to reach their final destination, how to keep themselves alive in the meanwhile, and how to do it all without losing their humanity in the process.
Other Showtimes:

SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2025, Shoreline Community College

8:30 PM

Seattle International Film Festival: Everybody Loves Touda
2025-05-23 20:30 - 22:30 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
In the latest film from Nabil Ayouch (Horses of God, SIFF 2014) co-written with his wife, director Maryam Touzani (The Blue Caftan, SIFF 2023), Touda dreams of being a sheikha, or traditional Moroccan folk singer. More than that, she is determined to be one, which is fortunate because the road ahead is a rocky one. A single mother with a young son to support, she sings at parties and in bars in her provincial town. But these opportunities are limited and fraught with risk, as her male audience’s “love” often shades into something more proprietary and threatening. She sets her sights on Casablanca and, leaving her son with her parents and ignoring the disapproval of her conservative brother, she heads to the big city. There Touda meets an older musician, a violinist who recognizes her ambition and her potential, and becomes a sort of mentor. With his help, she sets about to master the aita, a Moroccan musical genre rooted in poetry about the many struggles of life, from the personal to the political. As her singing improves, she can command higher fees and a more elite audience. But in a culture where female performers are as often eroticized and stigmatized as venerated, what does it really mean to be loved?

Seattle International Film Festival: Coexistence, My Ass!
2025-05-24 20:00 - 22:00 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
Comedy about Israel and Palestine is a high-wire act and perhaps never more so than now, which is part of what makes this documentary about Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi so riveting. With an Iranian-Jewish mother and an Ashkenazi Romanian father, Noam grew up in Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam, an intentional community where Arab and Jewish families live together by choice, and where her left-wing parents moved the family in the early 1990s.
A committed activist for equal rights for Palestinians and Jews—as she explains, coexistence can only exist between equals—she studied International Relations at Brandeis before taking a job at the United Nations. When she was invited by Harvard to work on a peace project, she chose to develop her one-woman show, “Coexistence, My Ass!” Shooting on the film began in 2020 and tracks the show’s progress through COVID and Noam’s growing fame, as well as Noam’s own navigation of the attacks on October 7th, their impact on her friends and family, and the subsequent war on Gaza.
Consistent through it all is Noam’s clear-eyed insight—sometimes funny, sometimes deadly serious, sometimes both at the same time. Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression.
Other Showtimes:

SUNDAY, MAY 25, 2025, SIFF Cinema Uptown

11:30 AM

Seattle International Film Festival: To A Land Unknown
2025-05-24 20:30 - 22:30 | Shoreline Community College Theater, 16101 Greenwood Avenue N. (Building 1600), Shoreline, WA, 98133
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
Mahdi Fleifel, who made the great documentary A World Not Ours (SIFF 2013) about the Ein el-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon, where his parents were born, returns to the Festival with his fiction debut, To a Land Unknown.
The refugees in this story have made out of their camp and travelled to Athens, where they are stranded en route to Germany. Chatila is clever and resourceful, and it falls to him to come up with a plan; Reda, his cousin, is sweet but hapless, owing in part to a weakness for drugs. To raise the money they need for fake passports, they resort to increasingly desperate crimes: stealing, sex work, human trafficking. To sustain themselves, they nurture the fantasy of the café they plan to open in Germany, where Chatila’s wife will cook, and they’ll make enough money to bring the rest of their family, currently stuck in the camp.
While films about refugees are not uncommon, what sets this film apart is the way the director puts us squarely in Chatila and Reda’s shoes as they try to figure out how to reach their final destination, how to keep themselves alive in the meanwhile, and how to do it all without losing their humanity in the process.

Seattle International Film Festival: Coexistence, My Ass!
2025-05-25 11:30 - 13:30 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
Want a discount on your ticket? Use code ARABISH51 for $3 when purchasing tickets!
Comedy about Israel and Palestine is a high-wire act and perhaps never more so than now, which is part of what makes this documentary about Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi so riveting. With an Iranian-Jewish mother and an Ashkenazi Romanian father, Noam grew up in Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam, an intentional community where Arab and Jewish families live together by choice, and where her left-wing parents moved the family in the early 1990s.
A committed activist for equal rights for Palestinians and Jews—as she explains, coexistence can only exist between equals—she studied International Relations at Brandeis before taking a job at the United Nations. When she was invited by Harvard to work on a peace project, she chose to develop her one-woman show, “Coexistence, My Ass!” Shooting on the film began in 2020 and tracks the show’s progress through COVID and Noam’s growing fame, as well as Noam’s own navigation of the attacks on October 7th, their impact on her friends and family, and the subsequent war on Gaza.
Consistent through it all is Noam’s clear-eyed insight—sometimes funny, sometimes deadly serious, sometimes both at the same time. Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression.

Free Film Screening: Israelism
2025-05-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Vashon Theater, 17723 Vashon Highway SW, Vashon, WA, 98070
Two young American Jews travel to Israel seeking a deeper understanding of the country they were raised to love. What they encounter profoundly impacts them, leading them to join a growing movement to redefine their community’s relationship with Israel in this challenging and emotional journey. Join us for the free screening of this film.
About the film
Two young American Jews – Simone Zimmerman and Eitan – are raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs. Eitan joins the Israeli military. Simone supports Israel on ‘the other battlefield:’ America’s college campuses. When they witness Israel‘s mistreatment of the Palestinian people with their own eyes, they are horrified and heartbroken.
They join the movement of young American Jews battling the old guard over Israel’s centrality in American Judaism, and demanding freedom for the Palestinian people. Their stories reveal a generational divide in the American Jewish community as more young Jews question the narratives their synagogues and Hebrew school teachers fed them as children.
The film also features voices like Jacqui, a Jewish educator who says “Judaism is Israel and Israel is Judaism”, and former Anti-Defamation League President Abe Foxman, who claims voices like Simone and Eitan’s represent a small minority. Thought leaders like Peter Beinart, Jeremy Ben-Ami, Noura Erakat, Cornel West, and Noam Chomsky also weigh in.
Directed by two first-time Jewish filmmakers who share a similar story to the film’s protagonists, Israelism is produced by Peabody-winner and 4-time Emmy-nominee Daniel J. Chalfen (Loudmouth, Boycott), executive produced by two-time Emmy-winner Brian A. Kates (Marvelous Ms. Maisel, Succession) and edited by Emmy-winner Tony Hale (The Story of Plastic), Israelism uniquely explores how Jewish attitudes towards Israel are changing dramatically, with massive consequences for the region and for Judaism itself.

Kitsap Solidarity Presents: One Family in Gaza
2025-05-31 16:30 - 17:30 | Bainbridge Island Senior/Community Center, 370 Brien Dr. SE, Bainbridge Island, WA, 98110
An original play by Crystal Zevon
Based on texts from Yasser in Gaza
In November 2023, Crystal Zevon, a longtime activist for Palestine, began a text conversation with a young 33 year old Palestinian man in Gaza. Yasser is a civil engineer, a husband and the father of three young children under the age of seven. For more than a year, and continuing, Yasser and Crystal have exchanged texts, photos and videos on almost a daily basis. These unedited texts create the basis for telling the poignant, terrifying, and sometimes joyful story of one family’s struggle to survive through a genocide. Yasser’s texts are juxtaposed against news items of corresponding dates, and the thoughts and feelings of someone living in comfort and safety oceans away.
One Family in Gaza is a play about simply that – One Family in Gaza .
The objective for creating this play is three-fold:

To offer a play that is profound in its reliance on the truths disclosed through a relationship grounded in the reality of two distant and distinct realities, yet a play so simple that anyone can perform it anywhere – from a dining room table reading to a staged performance.

To humanize Palestinians by creating a relationship with one family whose loves, fears, hopes and dreams are not unlike yours.

To motivate those who see the play to continue the discussion, to delve beneath the media’s glossing over of a genocide and take action to expose it.
It is through identification with the basic human truths revealed in the daily life of one family that we can and must create change.

More information to come (please check website)

Virtual Movie Screenings: Every Saturday with Palestine Museum US
2025-06-07 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual
Check website: https://www.palestinemuseum.us/events for current showings and for registration links!
Often the screening ends with a Q&A with the director!

Ground Zero
2025-06-20 17:30 - 20:30 | First United Methodist Church (Oak Harbor), 1050 SE Ireland St, Oak Harbor, WA, 98277
FREE MOVIE SCREENING in OAK HARBOR!
Experience a night of powerful storytelling and community spirit in support of one Palestinian family. Be in community and watch “From Ground Zero” on Friday, June 20th (doors open 5:30pm) at First United Methodist Church in Oak Harbor, WA.
Free entry and refreshments! RSVP for tickets using the link in bio 🍉

Movie: The Teacher
2025-06-22 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-06-23 19:30 - 21:00 | The Beacon, 4405 Rainier Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98118, United States
The destruction of a Palestinian home by Israeli edict and the murder of a youth at the hands of an Israeli settler set the stage for even more shocks to come in THE TEACHER. Saleh Bakri is Basem, an amiable educator who tries to steer the deceased boy’s younger brother Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) from seeking revenge. At the same time, Basem ignores his own advice, maintaining ties with the resistance and involving himself in a hostage situation. He tries to keep his activities secret from Adam and his British girlfriend Lisa (Imogen Poots) but it becomes harder to maintain his silence when Israeli troops show up at his door.
THE TEACHER, set and shot with difficulty in occupied territory, is the feature debut of Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning British-Palestinian writer-director Farah Nabulsi. Inspired by true events and led by a commanding and wounded performance from Bakri, the film probes the desperate actions of those who feel they have no recourse for justice.
