Julia Bacha
, 2017
, 76 min
Synopsis: When a nation-wide uprising breaks out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a young woman in Gaza must make a choice between love, family, and freedom. Undaunted, she embraces all three, joining a clandestine network of women in a movement that forces the world to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time. Naila and…
, 2021
, 94 min
Synopsis: When a news publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona, and a speech therapist in Texas are told they must choose between their jobs and their political beliefs, they launch legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech across 36 states in America. Boycott traces the impact of state legislation designed to…
, 2009
, 80 min
Synopsis: Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites Palestinian political factions and invites Israeli supporters to join an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women’s contingent that quickly moves to the…
, 2012
, 25 min
Synopsis: My Neighbourhood follows Palestinian teenager Mohammed El Kurd as half of his home in East Jerusalem is taken over by Jewish settlers. When Israeli activists arrive to protest the take over, Mohammed comes of age in the face of unrelenting tension with his neighbours and unexpected cooperation with Israeli allies in his backyard. Shortly after their displacement,…
December 2023
Ateyyat El Abnoudy, Maged Nader, Mohamed Abdelkarim, Assem Hendawi
EGYPT: DREAM AND NIGHTMARES is a film program investigating questions of utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares in modern and contemporary Egypt following the army officers movement in 1952. This survey features works by filmmakers and artists from different generations who work across various film styles and narrative frameworks. The first three films – Permissible Dreams, Rawya, and Girls Still…
Ateyyat El Abnoudy
, 1983
, 31 min
Synopsis: Permissible Dreams traces the life of Oum Said, a woman farmer living in a small town on the Suez Canal. Although she does not read or write, the woman in question is her family’s economist, doctor, and the planner of its future, as she dreams ‘to the limits of her possibilities’ where home is the premise…
, 1995
, 16 min
Synopsis: A portrait of an ambitious peasant female artist.
, 24 min
Synopsis: In persistent close shots, the film follows the challenges facing girls in a country where one in four marries before the age of sixteen and one in five ever attends school. An affecting view of how Egyptian women and girls still struggle for their autonomy through such basic human rights as education and for the…
Maged Nader
, 2020
, 11 min
Synopsis: A man returns to his neighborhood looking for his brother. He faces the destruction of his old area which has become a featureless wasteland. He keeps looking for his brother’s traces, but all he finds is the urban legend about his disappearance.
Mohamed Abdelkarim
, 8 min
Synopsis: Gazing… Unseeing speculatively envisions a dystopian future scenario of an Egyptian city post-disaster. Floods have taken over the West Sahara, setting off a string of corporate and governmental measures to control the rioting population. The film is based on an interview with an imagined fugitive. Through different positions, ideological turns, and questions on economic sovereignty, the…
