20th Arab Film Festival

Screening at Walker Cinema

Sunday, September 27 at 3:00 PM at Walker Cinema

This film is presented with the support of the Estate of Dr. Inaam Matar.

ABOUT THE FILM

In 2001, Kamal Aljafari set out with a MiniDV camera on a trip to Gaza in search of a man he met while in prison during the first Palestinian Intifada. Aljafari did not immediately do anything with the footage, but rewatching the tapes two decades later, he realized it was a found object, a film already completed. It captures Aljafari and a local guide, Hasan, traversing the region in search of this former cell mate, recording fleeting moments of everyday life and fragments of a reality in Gaza’s streets and landscapes now irreversibly altered. With Hasan in Gaza transforms this forgotten footage into a cinematic reflection on memory, loss, and the passage of time, capturing a Gaza of the past and glimpsing lives that may never be found again.

FILMMAKER BIO

Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker. He attended the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and lives in Berlin, Germany. He has taught filmmaking at The New School and the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie, Berlin. In his films, he combines documentary and fiction to portray everyday life in Palestine. His work has been shown at international film festivals and in galleries all over the world. His most recent work, With Hasan in Gaza (2025), premiered in the International Competition at Locarno Film Festival.

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.