18th Arab Film Festival

Saturday, September 28 at 12:00pm

The screening of Three Promises (61 min) is preceded by pal/imp/sest (32 min) and The Poem We Sang (20 min).

ABOUT Three Promises

Dir. Yousef Srouji • Palestine • 2023 • 61 min • Documentary • Arabic
Three Promises is the story of a mother and her camera, of a son and his suppressed memories, and of Palestine. In the early 2000s, while the Israeli army retaliates against the Second Intifada in the West Bank, Suha films her daily family life, punctuated by frequent trips underground and overwhelmed by the anguish of her two young children. At every moment of intense danger, she promises God that she will leave if they survive. In 2017, her son discovers this archive of footage and reconnects with this suppressed past, wondering alongside his mother what drove her to record their suffering and why she delayed fleeing. While on the surface the film depicts a portrait of everyday life in times of war, on a deeper level, it presents the staggering beauty of a mother’s love. Blending the voice of the present with impressive family footage, Yousef completes the story his mother began, thus averting the act of forgetting on a personal and collective level.

FILMMAKER BIO

Yousef Srouji is a first-time documentary filmmaker and longtime storyteller. His work focuses on understanding the dynamics of occupation in Palestine as well as on community resilience in conflict zones. He was a fellow with the SFFilm Catapult Documentary Fellowship and the Gotham Documentary Feature Lab (formerly IFP Documentary Lab) and received production and post-production grants from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC).

ABOUT pal/imp/sest

Dir. Zelikha Shoja • USA • 2024 • 32 min • Experimental/Documentary • English, Persian
A choir of witnesses revisits a disrupted mourning session. The polyphonic narration in pal/imp/sest oscillates between absurd, profound, and found personal stories and footage, all reflecting on how grief rituals manifest. The film examines a series of ruptures, possessions, and dispossessions, regarding and presenting each as geopoetic witnessing of colliding and entangled histories, traumas, and bodies through unfolding violence on Onondaga land, as well as in Afghanistan and Gaza.

FILMMAKER BIO

Zelikha Zohra Shoja (she/they) is an experimental filmmaker, community organizer, and arts educator living on Onondaga land (Syracuse, New York). Her artistic practice is engaged in geopoetics, communal storytelling, grief work, and post-memory (or the transmission of memory). Through performance, she re-stages and re-enacts moments toward an embodied archive.

ABOUT The Poem We Sang

Dir. Annie Sakkab • Palestine, Canada, Jordan • 2024 • 20 min • Experimental/Documentary • Arabic
An experimental documentary that meditates on love and longing––the love of one's family and the longing for one's home––The Poem We Sang contemplates overcoming the trauma of loss and forced migration by transforming lifelong regrets into a healing journey of creative catharsis and bearing witness. A personal archive that exposes and documents collective memories and experiences, The Poem We Sang edits together family photos, recordings, and stories into a visually rich and layered tapestry.

FILMMAKER BIO

Annie Sakkab is a Palestinian-Jordanian-Canadian filmmaker and photojournalist. She seeks long-form narrative with a focus on women's issues, identity, and social justice. Her first short documentary Hollie's Dress had its World Premiere at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in 2020. Her second short experimental documentary, The Poem We Sang, examines Intergenerational trauma and post-memory in the context of Palestine.

PRESENTED BY MIZNA

Celebrating 25 years in 2024, 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 twenty years, we have 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.