Palestinian Film Festival
The Palestinian Film Festival returns to celebrate its tenth year with a stacked program of award-winning features, ground-breaking documentaries, thought-provoking shorts and the launch of its exciting new program stream, Arab Cinema Days. Traversing themes of people, place and identity, this year’s Festival presents the very best in Palestinian cinema to audiences in Brisbane from November 8-10.
This year’s program features international film festival favourites: winner of the 2019 Cannes Special Jury Prize It Must Be Heaven, a comic saga exploring identity, nationality and the true nature of home; Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominated documentary Gaza about the everyday lives of Gazan citizens beyond the rubble of perennial conflict; and the popular feature from this year’s Sydney Film Festival, Screwdriver in which a Palestinian political prisoner battles to reintegrate into society following his release. Ground-breaking documentaries include: Ibrahim: A Fate to Define, fresh from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, an intensely personal and provocative documentary chronicling director Lina Alabed’s quest to redefine her own identity by searching for traces of her missing father; and theatre director Nidal Badarny’s debut Waiting for Faraj Allah which takes us behind the scenes of a Palestinian theatre production of Samuel Beckett’s iconic tragicomedy Waiting For Godot, delving into the lives of the crew and revealing startling parallels between the play’s themes and their own lives.
The Festival will also showcase a selection of stellar short films: Cannes Film Festival 3rd Prize Cinéfondation winner Ambience follows the story of two young Palestinians trying to record a music demo inside a noisy refugee camp; The Crossing, a heart-wrenching family drama chronicling three siblings’ struggle to cross the Israeli-West Bank Separation Wall and visit their sick grandfather on the other side; and In Vitro, an otherworldly rumination on memory, history, place and identity set in Bethlehem decades after an eco-disaster.
Head to the Palestinian Film Festival website for screening details.
