19th Arab Film Festival

Saturday, September 27 at 2:45 PM

Memory sustains. It anchors us and keeps us rooted and in touch with our histories, both personal and collective. But memory also haunts. The past can often manifest in ways that stifle our movements forward. The films in this segment make us reconsider the importance of both memory and forgetting and of making spaces to reimagine the present through a reckoning with the past.

ABOUT THE FILMS

KHALED AND NEMA

Dir. Sohail Dahdal • Palestine • 2024 • Arabic • 17 min
A ten-year-old Bedouin boy, Khaled, and his trusted goat, Nema, embark on a mission to bring Abu Mariam’s memory back to save their village from demolition by the Israeli army.

FILMMAKER BIO

Sohail Dahdal is an award-winning Palestinian filmmaker, screenwriter, and multimedia artist with a keen interest in crafting unconventional stories that blend fictional narrative with documentary footage. Dahdal uses film to push the boundaries of storytelling in both form and substance. Additionally, Dahdal serves as the head of the media department at the American University of Sharjah and is the founder and creative director of 5th Wall, an XR Media start-up based in Sharjah.

2006

Dir. Gabriella Choueifaty • France, Lebanon • 2023 • Arabic • 23 min
As war rages in Lebanon in 2006, thirteen-year-old Sariah tries to lead a normal life with her older sister and her mother. While they are confined to their mountain home overlooking Beirut, time seems to stand still as each of them tries to escape their isolated environment, causing old tensions to resurface.

FILMMAKER BIO

Gabriella Choueifaty is a French-Lebanese filmmaker who lives between Paris and Beirut. After studying modern literature and cinema, and becoming fascinated by images and photography, she began working as a camera assistant in 2015. She used this experience to direct her first short film 2006, which was selected by the Warshat Aflam screenwriting workshop at Rencontres des Cinémas Arabes in Marseille in 2018.

PERISHABLE IDOL

Dir. Majid Al-Remaih • France, Kuwait, Qatar • 2025 • Arabic • 19 min
As the blue sky meets the surrounding seas, the native-turned-archeologist Hassan Al-Failakawy returns to the abandoned island of Failaka, off the coast of Kuwait. Between the island’s desolation and the ruins created by the Gulf War, Hassan is met with questions about return, restitution, and belonging.

FILMMAKER BIO

Majid Al-Remaihi is a filmmaker and artist from Doha, Qatar. Prior to enrolling at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, Al-Remaihi received the close mentorship of Cambodian director Rithy Panh. Under Panh, he directed his short And Then They Burn the Sea (2021), which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. Al-Remaihi’s practice in cinema moves between documentary methods and reconstructions of the intangible. He explores the realm of the unseen and invisible as points where history, power, and social conditions are condensed. He is also a film programmer and has programmed for the Doha Film Institute since 2019.

FROM MY MOTHER’S NOVEL

Dir. Fatima Joumaa • Lebanon • 2025 • Arabic • 9 min
Fatima, a young photographer, returns to Southern Lebanon after capturing the grief and resilience of her war-torn homeland through her lens. At home, she delves into her mother Layla’s old book of photographs. As Fatima’s photographs intertwine with her mother’s reflections, the film explores themes of grief, resilience, and the vital role of women as memory keepers.

FILMMAKER BIO

Fatima Joumaa is an image/filmmaker from South Lebanon. She graduated from IESAV, Saint Joseph University of Beirut with a degree in audiovisual studies and continued her documentary training at La Fémis in Paris. Her visual work and research primarily explore personal identity within the context of collective memory, the community of Southern Lebanon, and cinema as a recurring theme. She has also participated in various residencies as a writer and producer with her first feature film.

UPSHOT

Dir. Maha Haj  • Palestine, Italy, France • 2024 • Arabic • 34 min
Aging couple Suleiman and Mona lead a solitary life in which they care for animals and trees and have constant heated discussions about their children’s life choices. One day, their routine is disturbed when a stranger shows up, calling to mind a painful past.

FILMMAKER BIO

Maha Haj was born in Nazareth in 1970. She graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in English and Arabic literature. Her cinematic experience stems from her work as an artistic designer on films like The Time That Remains (2009) and The Attack (2012). She has written and directed many short and feature films, including Oranges (2009), Behind These Walls (2010), and Mediterranean Fever (2022).

PRESENTED BY MIZNA

Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than 25 years, Mizna has been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.