OPENING FILMS

Life is Beautiful

Life is Beautiful (2023) 90' Palestine, Norway
Director Mohamed Jabaly

Synopsis:
Life is Beautiful (2023) directed by Mohamed Jabaly is a meditation on homesickness experienced by the filmmaker as he finds himself on exchange in Norway suddenly unable to return to his home in Gaza. Jabaly’s  DIY-style diary vlogs recapitulate the making of his debut documentary Ambulance while documenting the distance to his family forced upon him, as well as glimpses of solace provided through the support he receives from his new friends in Tromsø, Norway, the twin city to Gaza. The bureaucratic efforts of seeking asylum in Norway displayed reveal a critique to the legal classification of both (un-)professional filmmakers and “stateless” refugees.

Time: 19h-21:00

Location : Studio/K
Studio #1

Post-screening Q&A

Tickets: https://studio-k.nu/

Ambulance

Ambulance (2016) ' Palestine, Norway
Director Mohamed Jabaly

Synopsis:


Bio:


Time: 21h-23:00

Location : Studio/K
Studio #2

Tickets
https://studio-k.nu/

Lyd

Lyd (2024) 72' Palestine, UK, USA
Director Rami Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland

Synopsis:
This feature-length, sci-fi documentary shares multiple pasts, presents, and futures of the city of Lyd in Palestine/Israel. From the perspective of the city herself, voiced by Palestinian actress Maisa Abd Elhadithe viewer is guided through the lifespan of a five-thousand-year-old city and its residents. Lyd was once a thriving Palestinian city with a rich history. In 636AD, It was even considered the first capital of Palestine. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Lyd became an Israeli city, and in the process, hundreds of Lyd’s Palestinian residents were massacred by Israeli forces, and most of the city’s 50,000 Palestinian residents were exiled. Today, the city has a Jewish Israeli majority and a Palestinian minority and is disinvested and divided by racism and violence. (READ MORE)


Bio:
Rami Younis is a Palestinian filmmaker, writer, and journalist from Lyd.

Sarah Friedland is a NYC-based media artist and educator.Her recent feature documentary titled which she co-direct with Rami Younis, iered at the 2023 Amman International Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary and the FIBRESCI prize from the International Critics Association. (READ MORE)


Time: 17h-19:00

Location : LAB111
LAB #1

Tickets:https://www.lab111.nl/

Retrospective: Razan Alsalah + Talk  

Canada Park (2019) 9' Canada
Director Razan Alsalah

Synopsis:
I walk on snow to fall unto the desert. I find myself on unceded indigenous territory in so called Canada, an exile unable to return to Palestine. I trespass the colonial border as a digital spectre floating through Ayalon-Canada Park, transplanted over three Palestinian villages razed by the Israeli Defense Forces in 1967.


A Stone's Throw (2021) 44' Canada, Palestine, Lebanon
Director Razan AlSalah

Synopsis:
Amine, a Palestinian elder, is exiled twice from both land and labor, from Haifa to Beirut to a Gulf offshore oil platform. A Stone’s Throw rehearses a history of the Palestinian resistance when in 1936 the oil laborers of Haifa blew up a BP pipeline.


About the filmmaker

Razan AlSalah is an interdisciplinary artist currently investigating the material aesthetics of the dis/appearance of places and people in colonial image worlds. By breaking these thresholds of vision, her films lead us into an elsewhere in which colonialism no longer makes sense. Her work has been experienced in community-based and international galleries and film festivals, including Art of the Real, Prismatic Ground, RIDM, HotDocs, Yebisu, Melbourne, Glasgow and Beirut International, Sharjah Film Forum, IZK Institute for Contemporary Art and Sursock Museum. Razan teaches film and media arts at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.


Time: 19h-20:30

Location: Filmtheater Kriterion
Kriterion #1

Q&A post screening

Tickets
https://www.kriterion.nl/

Retrospective: Razan Alsalah + Talk  

Canada Park (2019) 9' Canada
Director Razan Alsalah

Synopsis:
I walk on snow to fall unto the desert. I find myself on unceded indigenous territory in so called Canada, an exile unable to return to Palestine. I trespass the colonial border as a digital spectre floating through Ayalon-Canada Park, transplanted over three Palestinian villages razed by the Israeli Defense Forces in 1967.


A Stone's Throw (2021) 44' Canada, Palestine, Lebanon
Director Razan AlSalah

Synopsis:
Amine, a Palestinian elder, is exiled twice from both land and labor, from Haifa to Beirut to a Gulf offshore oil platform. A Stone’s Throw rehearses a history of the Palestinian resistance when in 1936 the oil laborers of Haifa blew up a BP pipeline.


About the filmmaker

Razan AlSalah is an interdisciplinary artist currently investigating the material aesthetics of the dis/appearance of places and people in colonial image worlds. By breaking these thresholds of vision, her films lead us into an elsewhere in which colonialism no longer makes sense. Her work has been experienced in community-based and international galleries and film festivals, including Art of the Real, Prismatic Ground, RIDM, HotDocs, Yebisu, Melbourne, Glasgow and Beirut International, Sharjah Film Forum, IZK Institute for Contemporary Art and Sursock Museum. Razan teaches film and media arts at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.


Time: 19h-20:30

Location: Filmtheater Kriterion
Kriterion #1

Q&A post screening

Tickets
https://www.kriterion.nl/

From Turtle Island to Palestine - Shorts programme

COWBOY (1973) 15' Canada
Director Sami AlSalamooni

Synopsis:


Both, Instrument and Sound (2024) 40' Canada
Director Sharlene Bamboat

Synopsis:


DISLOCATION BLUES (2017) 16'57" USA
Director Sky Hopinka

Synopsis:
An incomplete and imperfect portrait of reflections from Standing Rock. Cleo Keahna recounts his experiences entering, being at, and leaving the camp and the difficulties and the reluctance in looking back with a clear and critical eye. Terry Running Wild describes what his camp is like, and what he hopes it will become.

Time: 21h-22:15

Location: Filmtheater Kriterion
Kriterion #2

Tickets
https://www.kriterion.nl/

Drinks

Join us for post screening drinks and conversation at Filmtheater De Uitkijk

Time: 22:15-23h
Location: Filmtheater De Uitkijk

Lyd

Lyd (2024) 72' Palestine, UK, USA
Director Rami Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland

Synopsis:
This feature-length, sci-fi documentary shares multiple pasts, presents, and futures of the city of Lyd in Palestine/Israel. From the perspective of the city herself, voiced by Palestinian actress Maisa Abd Elhadithe viewer is guided through the lifespan of a five-thousand-year-old city and its residents. Lyd was once a thriving Palestinian city with a rich history. In 636AD, It was even considered the first capital of Palestine. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Lyd became an Israeli city, and in the process, hundreds of Lyd’s Palestinian residents were massacred by Israeli forces, and most of the city’s 50,000 Palestinian residents were exiled. Today, the city has a Jewish Israeli majority and a Palestinian minority and is disinvested and divided by racism and violence. (READ MORE)


Bio:
Rami Younis is a Palestinian filmmaker, writer, and journalist from Lyd.

Sarah Friedland is a NYC-based media artist and educator.Her recent feature documentary titled which she co-direct with Rami Younis, iered at the 2023 Amman International Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary and the FIBRESCI prize from the International Critics Association. (READ MORE)


Time: 13h-14:15

Location :
LAB111
LAB #1

Tickets:https://www.lab111.nl/

Shorts Programme # 3

A Night We Held Between (2024) 30' Netherlands
Director by Noor Abed

Synopsis:
A Night We Held Between takes the ancient tale of the Minoan Labyrinth as historical inspiration, connecting mythology to the present socio-political reality in Palestine. Set in particular ancient sites across Palestine—caves, carved holes, underground passages, and wild valleys—the land, and landscape become the film’s main protagonists. Timeless, haunting scenes evoke that which is lost, forgotten or forsaken, while repetition and ritual recall ancient gestures related to goddesses, caves and offerings – gestures that resonate through to the present and open up spaces for the communal expression of connection to land and culture across time and space. (READ MORE)

Our Songs were Ready for all wars to come (2021) 22' Palestine, Netherlands
Film by Noor Abed

Synopsis:
our songs were ready for all wars to come is a film of choreographed scenes based on documented folk tales from Palestine. It begins with four minutes of darkness and the haunting sound of a woman’s voice. The perforated edge of the film, occasionally silhouetted by flashes of light, highlights the nature of the work as a mediated document. Images of women performing draw connections between latent stories of water wells and communal rituals associated with disappearance, mourning and death. The only narration in the film is a song, which is sung by Palestinian singer Maya Khaldi. Its lyrics are a collage of different folk tales.The film explores the critical stance of ‘folklore’ as a source of knowledge and its possible connection to alternative social and representational models in Palestine. (READ MORE)

As We cross to the Otherside of the Garden (2023) 14' Syria
Director Ameen Abo Kaseem

Synopsis:
In late 2018 war was over on the streets of Damascus. A whole generation was ready to start their fight against (for?) life. But soon it turned out to just be a beautiful unrealistic dream.


And Yet m mask is Powerful (2016 & 2018 ) 8' Palestine
Director Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme

Synopsis:
Neolithic masks taken from the West Bank and surrounding areas, and stored in private collections are hacked and 3D-printed. The oldest known masks, dating 9,000 years, mutate from dead fossil to living matter. Copies circulate in Palestine, eerily akin to a black ski mask. A group of youth wear them at the site of a destroyed Palestinian village. Becoming other, becoming anonymous, in this accidental moment of ritual and myth. Initiating a series of trips to possess and almost be possessed by these strangely living sites of erasure and wreckage.(READ MORE)


Time:15h-16:30

Location: LAB111
LAB #2

Tickets:
https://www.lab111.nl/

The Fashion Programme + Talk

Antenne (2021) 4'
Director Bashar Murad

Maskhara (2021) 4'
Director Bashar Murad

Chic Point (2003) 5'
Director Sharif Waked

Body Tones (2020) 2'
Director Dina Amin & Hazar Jawarbra

Errorvision (2021) 7'
Director
Trashy

Homecoming Queenz (2019) 11'
Director Elias Wakeem

Screening Location: LAB111
LAB #4

Time: 20h-21:30
Q&A post screening

Tickets:
https://www.lab111.nl/

Drinks

Join us for a post screening drink and a chat at Lab111

Time: 21:30-23h
Location: LAB111

ALAM

Alam (2022) 102' France, Tunisia
Director Firas Khoury

Synopsis:
Five Israeli-Palestinian high-school classmates struggling under the burden of forced forgetting — weigh the risks involved in remembering a different history.

Time: 16h-18:00

Location: Filmtheater Kriterion
Kriterion #4

Tickets:
https://www.kriterion.nl/

Shorts Programme # 2

MARIAM (2020) '5 Palestine, Netherlands
Director Dana Durr

Synopsis:Mariam undergoes a journey to find strength within herself through her culture and heritage, after the loss of her precious paradise.

ROOF KNOCKING (2017) '13 Palestine, Estonia
Director
Sina Salimi

Synopsis:In war-stricken Gaza, a woman prepares a meal for her family to break the fast in the month of Ramadan. A phone call by an Israeli soldier alerts her of the bombing of her building in 10 minutes.

WADI AL-SALIB: TWO MINUTES (2022) '2 Palestine
Director Bushra Barghouthi

Synopsis:


HIDE & SEEK (2024) '7 Palestine, Spain, Turkey, Lebanon, Netherlands, Syria, France
Director Rami Abbas

Synopsis: Hide & Seek is an animated short film that narrates the story of a child and his fish on their journey into the unknown, following the raid on the child’s town during the ongoing war ravaging his country. The short film captures the steps of this journey and its transformations, concluding as the child reaches one of the coasts.

STRAWBERRY (2017) '17 Palestine
Director Aida Ka'adan

Synopsis: Samir, 43, is the owner of a shoe shop in Ramallah who has never seen the sea. He decides to sneak past the Israeli border with other Palestinian construction workers to fulfill his dream of seeing the sea. Instead, he ends up at a construction site where Anas, 22, asks him to work for him.

MOONSCAPE (2020) '17
Director Mona Benyamin

Synopsis:Moonscape* is a short film which takes the form of a music video for a ballad/middle of the road song, performed as a duet between a male and female singer, in Arabic. The song traces the story of a man called Dennis M. Hope, who claimed ownership of the Moon in 1980 and thus founded the Lunar Embassy – a company that sells land on a variety of planets and Moons, and makes a connection between his story and that of the director's – a young Palestinian woman living under the Israeli occupation, longing to end the misery of her people in any way possible. (READ MORE)

*A moonscape is an area or vista of the lunar landscape (generally of the Earth's moon), or a visual representation of this, such as in a painting. The term "moonscape" is also sometimes used metaphorically for an area devastated or flattened by war, often by shelling.

Time: 16h-17:15

Location: Ventilator cinema (OT301, 2nd floor, Overtoom 301 Amsterdam)
Ventilator #1

Tickets:
https://www.ot301.nl/agenda/14932

Three Promises

Three Promises (2023) 60' Palestine, Lebanon, USA
Director Yousef Srouji

Synopsis: At the start of the 2000s, while the Israeli army is retaliating against the second intifada in the West Bank, Suha films her daily family life, punctuated by frequent trips underground and overwhelmed by the anguish of her two young children. At every moment of intense danger, she promises God that she will leave if they survive. In 2017, her son, the director of this film, discovers this archive and reconnects with this suppressed past, wondering with his mother what drove her to record a daily life of suffering, a stolen childhood, and why she delayed fleeing, paralyzed by the hope for change and burdened by the impossible choice between physical safety and emotional upheaval. While on the surface there emerges the heartrending portrait of everyday life in times of war, it is the staggering beauty of a mother’s love that is revealed between the lines. Blending the voice of the present with impressive family footage, Yousef Srouji completes the story begun by Suha, thus averting the act of forgetting, both personal and collective.Three Promises is the story of a mother and her camera, of a son and his suppressed memories, and of an entire country.

Time 18h-19:15

Location: Location: Ventilator cinema (OT301, 2nd floor, Overtoom 301 Amsterdam)
Ventilator #2

Tickets:
https://www.ot301.nl/agenda/14932

Closing Film : Aida Returns

Aida Returns (2023) 72' Lebanon
Director Carol Mansour

Synopsis: This is a sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, often absurd story of multiple journeys: the journey of loss as the director’s mother Aida struggled with Alzheimer’s disease finding solace in her repeated “returning” to the Yafa of her youth; the journey of losing a parent; and the ultimate return journey to Yafa where Aida would finally find rest [...]


Time:19h-20:15

Location: Filmtheater Kriterion
Kriterion #3

Tickets:
https://www.kriterion.nl/

DATES
10-13 October 2024

Filmtheater Kriterion - Filmtheater De Uitkijk -
Lab111- Ventilator Cinema - Studio/K 

Contact           
palfilmfestadam@gmail.com

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