Directors:
Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi
Year:
2024
Length:
90'
Category:
Feature film
Language:
Arabic, English
Subtitles:
English
After 43 horrific days working round the clock under constant bombardment in the emergency rooms of Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals, British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, emerged to find himself as a face of Palestinian resistance. In the news, Abu Sittah spoke of a catalogue of horrors from lacerated bodies, to amputations without anesthetics, orphaned children with no surviving family, and the deliberate targeting of medics and hospital facilities.
Filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi follow a long and terrifying journey through the night to meet him in Amman. Determined to capture his raw emotions they began filming him the moment he arrived through the door. Following him to Beirut, Amman, London, Kuwait and Dubai, they and he explore their common State of Passion.
The screening is followed by an opening night conversation with the filmmakers and film scholar and University of Amsterdam professor Özge Calafato.
Biographies:
Carol Mansour is an independent documentary filmmaker who is deeply passionate about social justice and human rights issues and believes that film is an important medium that gives voice to the marginalized. After ten years of working in television, she founded Forward Film Production in 2000 in Beirut, Lebanon. With over 24 years in documentary production, Mansour has covered the world from Sri Lanka to Lebanon to Yemen to Uzbekistan. She has achieved international recognition and honor for her films, with over one hundred film festival screenings and official selections worldwide.
Muna Khalidi holds a Ph.D. in health policy and planning, and with more than 34 years of experience working in the social and health development fields in Lebanon and the region. She has worked with various development and health organizations assisting them to develop strategic plans and to design and develop programs. In 2011, she started collaborating with Carol Mansour on the research and production of documentary films dealing with issues of social justice and human rights, bringing her experience in the academic, public, private, and NGO sectors into the documentary-making field.
Writer, curator, and academic, Özge Calafato is a Lecturer in Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She has served as Programming Manager for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF) and as a committee member for the SANAD Development and Post-Production Fund. From 2014 to 2020, she was Assistant Director of Akkasah: Center for Photography at NYU Abu Dhabi. Calafato has also worked as a programmer and consultant for numerous film festivals and institutions. Since 2024, she has been an advisor to the Palestinian Film Festival Amsterdam.
