20th Arab Film Festival

Friday, September 25 at 1:00 PM

ABOUT THE FILM

Activist, teacher, and poet Alex Odeh was a leading voice in his community, advocating in the media for peace and justice through dialogue and respect for all people. In October 1985, he was assassinated by a tripwire bomb placed in his office. Despite evidence and suspects identified at the time, no one has ever been held accountable for this horrible act of political violence. Using archival footage and contemporary investigation, we are taken back to the time of Odeh’s murder and trace the extremist forces that may have been behind his death and the disturbing ramifications that remain today.

FILMMAKER BIO

William Lafi Youmans is Associate Professor in Residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. He codirected and coproduced Who Killed Alex Odeh?, a documentary film that premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and Berlinale. He is interested in questions of transnationalism, power, and communication, and his primary research interests are global news, law, Middle East politics, and Arab American studies.

Jason Osder is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and associate professor of media and public affairs at The George Washington University. His work focuses on issues of power and identity in American history and he brings twenty years of experience teaching media arts and technologies with a pedagogy of learning by doing.

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.