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​Reel Palestine / 5th Edition / 2019
​Celebrating our 5th year, we’ve created the largest programme yet. Bringing you even more stories of the of the Palestinian people, art and culture with screenings held at Cinema Akil, the UAE’s first art house cinema. Including dèbut documentary screenings, exhibitions, talks and a marketplace showcasing artisanal crafts and treats. Opening night will première What Wala Wants to be followed by a Q&A with executive producer Wael Kabbani. Reel Palestine will also be screening at Warehouse 421 in Abu Dhabi.

2019 Festival Films

What Walaa Wants

​Directed by: Christy Garland
2018 | PG | Documentary | 89’
Arabic

Raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank while her mother was in prison, Walaa dreams of becoming a policewoman in the Palestinian Security Forces (PSF). Despite discouragement from her family, even her beloved brother Mohammed, Walaa applies and gets in.  But her own rebellious behavior and complicated relationship with her mother are challenging, as are the circumstances under which she lives.
Following Walaa from 15-21, with an intimate POV, What Walaa Wants is the compelling story of a defiant young girl navigating formidable obstacles, learning which rules to break and follow, and disproving the negative predictions from her surroundings and the world at large.

Wall

​Directed by: Cam Christiansen 
2017 | PG | Animated Documentary | 82’
English

WALL is a feature-length animated film written by and starring playwright and two-time Academy Award® nominee for screenwriting (The Hours, The Reader) David Hare, whom The Washington Post referred to as “the premiere political dramatist writing in English.” Hare’s body of work spans 35 years and deftly explores socio-political issues at home and abroad. The 80-minute film follows Hare on a trip to the Middle East to examine the impact the wall separating Israel and Palestine has had on the people of the region.

Naila & The Uprising

Directed by: Julia Bacha
2017 | PG | Animated Documentary |  76’
​Arabic & English

When a nation-wide uprising breaks out in 1987, a woman in Gaza must make a choice between love, family and freedom. Undaunted, she embraces all three, joining a clandestine network of women in a movement that forces the world to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time.
Naila and the Uprising chronicles the remarkable journey of Naila Ayesh whose story weaves through the most vibrant, nonviolent mobilization in Palestinian history – the First Intifada in the late 1980s.

The Judge

Directed by: Erika Cohn
2017 | PG | Documentary | 81'
Arabic 

A vérité legal drama about Judge Kholoud Al-Faqih, the first woman appointed to a Shari’a court in the Middle East, whose career provides rare insights into both Islamic law and gendered justice. When she was a young lawyer, Kholoud Al-Faqih walked into the office of Palestine’s Chief Justice and announced she wanted to join the bench. He laughed at her. But just a few years later, Kholoud became the first woman judge to be appointed to the Middle East’s Shari’a (Islamic law) courts. THE JUDGE offers a unique portrait of Judge Kholoud—her brave journey as a lawyer, her tireless fight for justice for women, and her drop-in visits with clients, friends, and family. 

The Tower

Directed by: Mats Grorud
2018 | PG | Animation | 80’
Arabic

Beirut, Lebanon, Today.
Wardi, an eleven-year-old Palestinian girl, lives with her whole family in the refugee camp where she was born. Her beloved great-grandfather Sidi was one of the first people to settle in the camp after being chased from his home back in 1948. The day Sidi gives her the key to his old house back in Galilee, she fears he may have lost hope of someday going home. As she searches for Sidi’s lost hope around the camp, she will collect her family’s testimonies, from one generation to the next.

A Stone's Throw From Prison

Directed by: Raquel Castells
2016 | PG | Documentary | 65’
​Arabic

Growing up in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is not easy. When you leave home for school, your mother can't be sure of when you'll be back. Maybe that night, maybe a year later. A stroll with your friends may end up in a police interrogation station. On any night, a group of soldiers may wake you up in the middle of the night and take you, your brother, your father... to prison, after blinding and handcuffing you in front of your family. You do not need to do anything special, just be there, be a kid. Rami, Ahmed, Mohammed... Three among thousands. The film is their story, but also that of courageous Israelis and Palestinians working to cut abuses, stop conflict and heal its consequences

Reel

Directed by: Judy Price
2008 | PG | Short | 6’
No Dialogue 

Archival material courtesy of the trustees of the Imperial War Museum
In Reel the disrupted residues of film have been selected – the lead-ins and endings of film with music composed by Johann Johannsson called Kaene byr til engli. The music brings to the images an intensity and spiritual dimension evoking the sensual and sublime that is found in the spaces disregarded by the more declarative ways of making sense of the world. The scuffing and scratching from handling film material; black cue dots, overexposing at the end of the reel, numbering or logging marks evokes all that is not seen in the documentation of history. 

White Oil

Directed by: Judy Price
2014 | PG | Documentary | 65’
Arabic 

White Oil unfolds narratives around colonialism, expropriation of land and mobility through the day-to-day lives of the quarry owners, workers and security guards. White Oil engages with the interstices of a number of genres; photography, documentary, the cinematic, fiction and testimony, with ethnographic methodologies playing an important role. 
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Ambulance

Directed by: Mohamed Jabaly 
2016| PG| Documentary| 80’
Arabic (English subtitles)

Ambulance is a raw, first-person account of the War in July 2014. Mohamed Jabaly, a young man from Gaza City joins an ambulance crew as the war approaches. What is it like to live under constant threat? How can Mohamed find his place in a country under siege, where there seems to be no foreseeable future? We experience the war through Mohamed’s eyes, watching directly from the passenger's seat, as he comes of age among dead bodies, terrified families, and the constant risk of sudden death. ​
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Salam

Directed by: Claire Fowler
2018 | PG| Short | 14’
English

A female Lyft driver navigates the night shift in New York City while waiting to hear life-or-death news from her family in Syria.
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​194. Us, children of the camp

Directed by: Samer Salameh
2017 | PG | Feature Documentary | 85’
Arabic (English subtitles)

The film follows the director’s journey as he is forced to join the Palestinian Liberation Army in Syria only a month before the start of the Syrian uprising. With the escalation of violence and the increasing attacks by the Syrian regime army on the camp, the director and his friends attempt to document the hopes, struggles, departures and loss they experience.
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The Man Who Stole Banksy 

Directed by: Marco Proserpio 
2018 | PG | Documentary | 90’
Arabic, English, Italian

In 2007 Banksy slips into Palestine to paint on the West Bank Barrier. Someone takes offence at a piece depicting an Israeli soldier checking a donkey’s ID. A local taxi driver decides to cut it off and sell it on eBay. What follows is a story of clashing cultures, art, identity, theft and black market. It is not one story, but many. Like Banksy’s art would be meaningless without its context, so the absence of it would be meaningless without an understanding of the elements that brought his artwork from Bethlehem to a Western auction house, along with the wall it was painted on.
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Memory of The Land

Directed by: Samira Badran
2017 | PG | Animation Short | 12’
Arabic (English subtitles)

Palestine. A body is trapped at a checkpoint; an essential mechanism of the Israeli occupation. The body is pierced by structural and physical violence, which is aggressive and arbitrary and prevents and attacks its free movement and existence. 
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Mafak

Dir: Bassam Jarbawi
2018 | PG | Feature | 108’  
Arabic (English subtitles)

After fifteen years of imprisonment, Ziad struggles to adjust to modern Palestinian life as the hero everyone hails him to be. Unable to distinguish reality from hallucination he unravels and forces himself to go back to where it all began. Unable to distinguish reality from hallucination he unravels and forces himself to go back to where it all began.

Bonbone

Directed by: Rakan Mayasi
2017 | PG | Short | 15’
Arabic (English subtitles) 

A Palestinian inmate serving time in an Israeli jail receives a visit from his wife who devises a bold and crafty operation to fulfill their secret desires. 
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Exit

Directed by: Mohanad Yaqubi 
2006 | PG | Short | 10’
Arabic (English subtitles) ​

Taking the London Underground as its location, the piece traverses genres - appearing part site specific dance performance, part atmospheric architectural exploration, and part video art. Featuring stunning cinematography and an award winning original score, Exit arrives at an accomplished fusion of the organic and the concrete by playing on the dancer's bodily and emotional encounter with a claustrophobia underworld of stark lines and threatening machinery

No Exit

Directed by: Mohanad Yaqubi 
2014 | PG | Short | 11’
Arabic (English subtitles)

As many of his generation, Ali decided to run from the hardship of the war, in his way, he meets a strange person in a bus station, an encounter that will change his perspective of waiting... !

The Crossing

Directed by: Ameen Nayfeh
2017 | PG | Short | 11’
Arabic, English, Hebrew (English subtitles)

Shady and his sister Maryam are very excited to visit their sick grandfather on the other side of the wall. Their elder brother Mohammed arrives in a hurry with the permit to cross. They arrive at the checkpoint, but having a permit sometimes is not enough to let them pass…
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Breaking News

Directed by: Ismahane Lahmare
2017 | PG | Short | 4’
Arabic (English subtitles)

"What is Breaking News in a country where war and
destruction are part of daily life?”​

I signed a Petition

Directed by: Mahdi Fleifel
2018 | PG | Short Documentary | 10’
English

Immediately after a Palestinian man signs an online petition, he is thrown into a panic-inducing spiral of self-doubt. Over the course of a conversation with an understanding friend, he analyses, deconstructs and interprets the meaning of his choice to publicly support the cultural boycott of Israel. 
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Check out the highlights of the Reel Palestine 2019 Festival

2019 Festival Events & Collaborations

Reel Palestine Souk

Reel Palestine's Souk featured a curated collection of unique crafts, souvenirs and flavors made and inspired by Palestinian traditions. Thank you to our partner vendors: Exhale. Thob. Ayadi by Widad. Harakat. Mooneh. Badira Gifts & Favors. Pearl Tree. Kan Yama Kan in Palestine. 

Visualizing Palestine

Visualizing Palestine is the first portfolio of Visualizing Impact (VI) an independent, non-profit laboratory for innovation at the intersection of data science, technology, and design. VP's works were displayed during the festival and its founders were available to discuss their creative and data process with attendees. 

Ya Hala Studio

Reel Palestine collaborated with Ya Hala Studio, by Camil Karam, to display his private and unique archive collection of vintage posters on Palestinian narratives dating from the early 1930’s up to today. His collection was exhibited during the festival in Cinema Akil. 

2019 Pop-Ups

Palestine Film Unit 50th Anniversary for Nakbah Day Screening

Scenes from Under Occupation in Gaza 
They Don't Exist
Palestine in the Eye
Dir: Mustafa Abu Ali

Children Nevertheless
​Dir: Khadijeh Habashneh Abu Ali

Reel Palestine celebrated 50 Years of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU) and commemorating Nakba Day on the 15th of May 2019. This special screening will include 4 short films from the PFU by award winning Mustafa Abu Ali who launched the Palestine Cinema Group (PCG) in Ramallah in 2004 and by Khadijah Habashneh Abu Ali, a former founding member of the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW) and a current board member of the Palestinian Woman Research and Documentation Center (PWRDC).

Reel Palestine in Beirut

The Feeling of Being Watched 
Dir: Assia Boundaoui
​Documentary|English without subtitles|2018 | 87'
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Reel Palestine partners with  Dar El-Nimer for Arts and Culture, an independent non-profit art foundation for historical, modern and contemporary cultural productions from Palestine and beyond, located in Beirut, Lebanon, for a series of pop up screenings for 2019.

Reel Palestine 2019 was featured in: