Reel Palestine is making its triumphant return to Dubai’s Cinema Akil today, with the much-loved celebration of Palestinian art and culture bringing along another set of acclaimed films, workshops, Q&A’s and more.
Running from January 27 to February 5, the 9th edition of the festival will feature a line-up of both celebrated classics and new. The 10-day fest will feature 18 films, 23 screenings, 7 Q&As, 36 vendors, 6 workshops, and three special guests live, including Farah Abou Kharroub, Firas Khoury, and Ashraf Dowani.
Headlining the festival is a retrospective of the work of Michel Khleifi, with his films Wedding in Galilee, Tale of the Three Jewels, and Fertile Memory screening throughout. New films include the opening-night pick Maha Haj’s Mediterranean Fever, as well as Wisam Al-Jafari’s By the Sea, Jumana Manna’s Foragers, Farah Abou Kharroub’s Seven Villages, Firas Khoury’s Alam, as well as Nicola Zambelli’s documentary Sarura.
How to get tickets to Reel Palestine 2023 at Cinema Akil
Tickets for Reel Palestine are AED 50 per film, though there will be an additional entry fee of AED 50 for the Quoz Arts Fest on January 28 and 29, which will give you access to the full arts fest in Al Serkal Avenue that day.
Tickets are available only here, and book early, as films for Reel Palestine always sell out. You can also buy tickets in person, 6 pm to 10 pm Mondays to Thursdays, 3 pm – 10 pm Fridays – Sundays.
Reel Palestine 2023 full schedule
JAN 27
19:00 – MEDITERRANEAN FEVER
21:30 – WEDDING IN GALILEE [MICHEL KHLEIFI RETROSPECTIVE]
JAN 28
17:00 – PALESTINIAN QUOTIDIEN | SHORTS PROGRAM + Q&A with Director Mohammad Mansour (zoom)
19:00 – FORAGERS + Q&A with Director Jumana Manna (zoom)
21:00 – TALE OF THREE JEWELS [MICHEL KHLEIFI RETROSPECTIVE]
JAN 29
16:30 – REMEMBRANCE | SHORTS PROGRAM + Q&A with Farah Abou Kharroub
19:00 – ALAM + Live Q&A with Director Firas Khoury (Invite only)
21:45 – SARURA
JAN 30
19:00 – ALAM + Live Q&A with Director Firas Khoury (Invite only)
21:45 – FERTILE MEMORY [MICHEL KHLEIFI RETROSPECTIVE]
JAN 31
19:00 – WEDDING IN GALILEE [MICHEL KHLEIFI RETROSPECTIVE]
21:30 – FORAGERS
FEB 01
19:00 – MEDITERRANEAN FEVER
20:00 – FORAGERS (Outdoor screening)
21:30 – REMEMBRANCE | SHORTS PROGRAM
FEB 02
19:00 – TALE OF THREE JEWELS [MICHEL KHLEIFI RETROSPECTIVE]
21:30 – PALESTINIAN QUOTIDIEN | SHORTS PROGRAM + Q&A with Ashraf Dowani
FEB 03
16:30 – FERTILE MEMORY [MICHEL KHLEIFI RETROSPECTIVE]
19:00 – SARURA + Q&A with Director Nicola Zambelli & Youth of Sumud Representatives (zoom)
FEB 04
17:00 – SARURA
19:00 – MEDITERRANEAN FEVER + Q&A with Director Maha Haj (zoom)
FEB 05
16:30 – ALAM (Invite only)
Reel Palestine full film-line up
MICHEL KHLEIFI RETROSPECTIVE
WEDDING IN GALILEE
Dir: Michel Khleifi
1987 | PG15 | Drama Feature | Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish with English subtitles | 113’
The elder of a Palestinian village under Israeli military rule wants permission to hold a wedding that will go past the imposed curfew. The Army commander agrees on the condition that he and his officers be guests of honor.
TALE OF THE THREE JEWELS
Dir: Michel Khleifi
1995 | PG15 | Drama Feature | Arabic with English subtitles | 112’
Yussef is a twelve-year old Palestinian child of the First Intifada. With his father is in prison and his brother a fugitive from the Israeli army, he lives alone with his mother and sister. Though his life is marked by violence, he lives in his imagination, often escaping from the refugee-camp into the Gaza countryside. While hunting for birds one day, Yussef meets Aida, a young gypsy girl who poses a daunting challenge, leading him into a perilous adventure. This lyrical and moving work was shot in the early months of 1994, while Gaza remained under Israeli military occupation, and was the first feature film ever to be shot entirely in the Gaza Strip.
FERTILE MEMORY
Dir: Michel Khleifi
1980 | PG15 | Documentary | Arabic with English subtitles | 99’
Fertile Memory is the feature debut of pioneering director Michel Khleifi. Lyrically blending both documentary and narrative elements, Khleifi skillfully and lovingly crafts a portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual struggles both define and transcend the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives.
FEATURE – NARRATIVE
MEDITERRANEAN FEVER
Dir: Maha Haj
2022 | PG15 | Drama Comedy | Arabic, Hebrew with English subtitles | 108’
Waleed (40) lives in Haifa with his wife and children and dreams of a writing career while suffering from chronic depression. He develops a close relationship with his neighbor (a small-time crook) with an ulterior plot in mind. While the scheme turns into an unexpected friendship between the two men, it leads them into a journey of dark encounters.
ALAM
Dir: Firas Khoury
2022 | PG15 | Drama | Arabic, Hebrew with English subtitles | 109’
Tamer and his friends lead a typical Palestinian student’s life — until the beautiful Maysaa arrives. To please her, Tamer agrees to take part in a mysterious operation on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day, a mourning day for Palestinians.
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FEATURE – DOCUMENTARY
FORAGERS
Dir: Jumana Manna
2022 | PG15 | Documentary, Fiction | Arabic, Hebrew with English subtitles | 65’
Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it moves between action, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ‘akkoub and za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in nes and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that further alienates them from their land while Israeli state representatives insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the inherited love, joy and knowledge in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the lm raises questions around the politics of extinction, namely who determines what is made extinct and what gets to live on.
SARURA
Dir: Nicola Zambelli
2022 | PG15 | Documentary | Arabic, Hebrew, English with English subtitles | 80’
At the gates of the Negev desert, a group of young Palestinians fights against the Israeli military occupation. “Youth of Sumud” – the youth of steadfast perseverance – tries to return to their people the
land that was taken from their families, restructuring the ancient cave village of Sarura.They face aggression with nonviolent action, defending themselves from rifles with their video cameras; they oppose desolation and death with hope and life.Ten years after their first documentary on the nonviolent struggle in the West Bank, the directors return to the village of At-Tuwani and, using archival material more than 15 years old, tell how the children have grown up.
SHORT FILMS
SHORTS PROGRAM 1: PALESTINIAN QUOTIDIEN
BY THE SEA
Dir: Wisam Al-Jafari
2022 | Drama | Arabic with English subtitles | 12’
Nahid wants to celebrate her husband’s birthday while he is on the run
from Israeli soldiers, however, due to the COVID-19 lockdown, it is really difficult for Nahid to get all the ingredients needed to bake the birthday cake. Will Nahid be able to celebrate her husband’s birthday with him in their secret hideout?
BANTUSTAN
Dir: Mohammad Rasheed Mansour
2022 | Experimental | Arabic with English subtitles | 8’
Bantustan, is a short experimental documentary film about the daily pressures and suffering experienced by the Palestinians as a result of the Zionist military checkpoints and barriers and the apartheid wall that separated the Palestinian territories from each other geographically and became as small units.
HAMZA: CHASING THE GHOST CHASING ME
Dir: Ward Kayyal
2022 | Drama | Arabic with English subtitles | 19’
After his recovery, middle-aged Hamza has continued a practice he began 20 years ago when he was freed from an Israeli prison: he goes into the woods every day to chase the lion that the locals don’t think exists. Hamza struggles to reach a peaceful place. Despite his wife’s pleadings and the villagers’ contempt, Hamza sits his baits and traps in the forest, hoping to defeat the mysterious threat. He finds refuge in his journey from social rejection and denial. In the woods, Hamza is free to act according to his beliefs, fighting his own battle to heal an open wound – the trauma of losing his childhood friend, and the horrific memories of torture and guilt.
I AM THE LAND IN A BODY
Dir: Thaer al-Azzeh
2022 | Documentary | Arabic with English subtitles | 5’
“I am the land in a body” is a film that represents the life of Sheikh Suleiman al-Hathalin, a community leader who was considered an icon of the Palestinian popular resistance. He spent his life protecting the land of his ancestors.
PARADISO, XXXI, 108
Dir: Kamal Aljafari
2022 | Documentary, Fiction, Essay | Hebrew with English subtitles | 18’
«It’s going to be quite soundless, the roar of our aircraft is drowning everything else. We are running straight into the most gigantic display of soundless fireworks in the world, and here we go to drop our bombs»
Culled from Israeli military propaganda materials from the ‘60s and ‘70s, Paradiso, XXI, 108 regards (with irony) towards a “cinematic self-portrait of men playing war”, to quote its author. Kamal Aljafari works here with a network of intertextual quotations – Sebald, Borges, Alighieri, themselves also “found” by the author – to create a conceptual counterpoint to the (fictional – what we see are exercises) images on the screen: “was then Your image like the image I see now?” (Dante). Like in Unusual Summer (2020), the filmmaker uses extradiegetic sound as a means of fictionalization (Silent Night, Handel’s Sarabande), proving his position as one of the most important found footage filmmakers of the moment.
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SHORTS PROGRAM: REMEMBRANCE
GO HOME
Dir: Razan Madhoon
2021 | Drama | Arabic, English, Polish with English subtitles | 14’
When a young Palestinian woman tries to claim asylum in the UK, she faces indifference and skepticism.
COMING HOME
Dir: Naim Naif and Margot Bowman
2022 | Documentary | Arabic, English with English subtitles | 10’
A collective of Palestinian-American dancers living in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn use traditional Dabka as a way to connect to their community and homeland.
SEVEN VILLAGES
Dir: Farah Abou Kharroub
2020 | Documentary, Animation | Arabic with English subtitles | 17’
A conversation over video call between Farah, who recently moved to Prague, and her grandmother, living in Lebanon; they talk about their fate as Palestinian refugees who were granted Lebanese citizenship in 1994. The two women, from different generations, touch on topics that are filled with emotions, memories and hope.
WHEN LIGHT IS DISPLACED
Dir: Zaina Bseiso
2021 | Documentary | Arabic with English subtitles | 7’
The filmmaker tells her father about her intention to film the last orange grove in Los Angeles.
Their disagreement transforms the grove into a space of contemplation on the politics of storytelling in the multi generational experience of Palestine in exile.
THE LAST DAYS OF APRIL
Dir: Laurence Buelens and Jean Forest
2021 | Documentary, Experimental | Arabic with English subtitles | 24’
In the Palestinian village of Battir, it is often said that every stone contains a story. The Last Days of April
probes the most famous one, the one that contains its legend. April 1949. The Israeli army is at the gates of
Battir. A handful of villagers decide to turn trickery into a military strategy.
EL-HALABIYEH
Dir: Rana Abushkhaidem
2022 | Documentary | Arabic with English subtitles | 20’
On the night before her heart operation in the hospital, the grandmother of Aleppo origin opens the doors of memory for her Palestinian granddaughter wide to tell us important details about the most prominent moments of her life in Aleppo, Jaffa and Hebron. So these memories, songs and tales of hope become a spell of love that wraps the granddaughter’s heart.