Palestinian Cinema Days Around The World Unveils Second Edition

Ramallah-based Palestinian cinema body Filmlab Palestine has unveiled the second edition of its ‘Palestinian Cinema Days Around The World’ initiative comprising 253 screenings of eight Palestinian films in 44 countries and over 150 cities this weekend.

The line-up includes Julia Bacha’s 2017 documentary Naila And The Uprising, charting the journey of Palestinian rights activist Naila Ayesh against the backdrop of the First Intifada in the late 1980s; Khaled Jarrar’s 2013 Chicago Best Doc winner Infiltrators, following Palestinians navigating Israeli check points, and Abdallah Al Khatib’s Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege, capturing the siege of the Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus during the Syrian War, which saw most of its 160,000 inhabitants flee.

Further titles include Micheal Winterbottom and Mohammad Sawwaf’s doc Eleven Days in May, commemorating 67 children who were killed over the course of 11 days in a previous flare up in the conflict in May 2021; Carol Mansour’s 2023 work Aida Returns, in which the Lebanese-Canadian-Palestinian director attempts to take her mother’s ashes back to her birth place of Yafa (Jaffa) which now lies in Israel, and Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan’s 2014 animated doc The Wanted 18 about the attempts of a Palestinian village to set up its own diary which was then deemed a security threat by Israel.

The initiative also showcases older titles, Resistance – Why by Christian Ghazi, featuring interviews in 1970 with politician and Men in the Sun and Return to Haifa author Ghassan Kanafani, Syrian intellectual Sadiq Jalal El-Azm and PLO figure Nabil Shaath, as well as Michel Khleifi’s 1984 doc Maloul Celebrates its Destruction about the former inhabitants of a Palestinian village destroyed in the 1948 Arab-Israel war.

The worldwide event replaces the org’s Palestine Cinema Days, which usually takes place in Ramallah and Bethlehem and other West Bank locations in October.

The festival and industry event was cancelled last year in the wake of the Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack on Southern Israel, which killed more than 1,100 people and resulted in the taking of 253 hostages, at least 60 of whom are still believed to be alive and in captivity in Gaza.

Since October 7, an Israeli military operation in the Palestinian territory aimed at freeing the hostages and wiping out Hamas, has killed more than 43,000 people and injured more than 100,000 people, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health authority.

Figures released this week by United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) suggest that 23,000 of those killed were children, women and elderly, while 16,735 were men. Around 10,000 missing people are believed to be lying dead under the rubble.

OCHA estimates that 91% of the 2.1M population is facing severe food insecurity, with the situation set to worsen following Israel’s decision to ban the activities of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which is the backbone of relief in Gaza.

“Over a year has passed and the devastating war on Gaza goes on, and the horrors only continue to mount. Yet international news outlets, world leaders, and major social media platforms persist in censoring the narrative, further dehumanizing Palestinians,” said Filmlab Palestine in a release unveiling the showcase.

“Palestine Cinema Days Around The World will illuminate film screens around the world, to uphold the Palestinian narrative so often forcibly silenced.”

As was the case last year, the one-day event has been time to coincide with the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration on November 2, in which Britain endorsed the creation of a national home for Jewish people in Palestine.

The controversial declaration also stated this should be done without prejudicing the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in the territory but Palestinians contest it opened the door for the stripping of the rights of those already living on the land.

Venues hosting screenings in the U.S. include Oakstop in San Francisco, Robinson S.P.A.C.E. and Jackson Market in L.A., BOK in Philadelphia, the Arab American National Museum in Michigan and Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film in New York.

Elsewhere, screenings are scheduled in London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague. Zurich, Rome, Madrid, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Alexandria and Cairo among other cities.

High-level talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have been taking place in Qatar this week, involving Mossad spy chief David Barnea and CIA director William Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, but there is little hope of a breakthrough.

The families of Israeli captives are calling on the Israeli government to reach a deal to secure the release of their relatives, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected these calls and is pressing on with military action in the Gaza strip.

Palestinian Cinema Days Around The World showcase is also supported by Beirut-based Arab film platform Aflamuna (previously known as Beirut DC) and Cairo-based company Seen Films.