2021 Festival

Reel Palestine Film Festival 2021 - 7th Edition

Reel Palestine returned on January 22nd-30th 2021 for its seventh edition, excited to share films with its community of supporters. Reel Palestine is a community-driven film festival run by volunteers and a passion for cinema. Reel Palestine’s 7th edition took place in collaboration with our long term partner Cinema Akil, the GCC’s only arthouse cinema. Reel Palestine's focus has been to build a community in the United Arab Emirates and around the world by bringing the best of cinema from Palestine and its diaspora.

The 2021 festival was a celebration of life itself: presenting stories of love, of family, of tears, of joy and heartbreak, of breaking bread and dancing, of romance and the creative spirit of humanity. The festival showcased films by celebrated international award winning directors as well as up and coming first-time filmmakers presenting narrative and documentary features and shorts across genres ranging from sci-fi to romantic comedies. The Palestine in our films was real and breathing with an artistic expression that has the ability to touch, transform and inspire.

Reel Palestine Film Festival 2021 Trailer

Reel Palestine 2021 Films & Shorts

Reel Palestine Film Festival 2021 screened over 28 features, documentaries and shorts which
premiered in the UAE for the first time.

See 2021 Films & Shorts

Reel Palestine 2021 Collaborations

Reel Palestine Souk
in collaboration with

As we do every year since 2017, Reel Palestine brought together the best and most creative artisans, makers and sellers of Palestinian products in the UAE in partnership with Kave, including:

Alwan.dxb / Ayadi by Widad / Exhale / Falafel Falastin / Hadeel El-Alami Arts / Jenin / Khyoot / Layyef Kayyef / Mooneh by Dima Al Sharif
Nablus Kanafeh / Nai / Nasij / Nour Milhem / Qamha / Rimal / Rulala Creations / Shatila Studio / Story of a Stitch / Thob

Visual Storytelling Workshop
in collaboration with

Visualizing Palestine, in collaboration with Reel Palestine, hosted a workshop to screen 'So Close Yet So Far', a series of short animations, an was followed by a detailed virtual tour into the behind the scenes of how those stories came to life.

Artist Yosra El-Gazzar showed participants her design process, from conceptualization, story flow and experimentations. The workshop was hosted by Gulf Photo Plus, in Alserkal Avenue.

Radio Al Hara
played at Cinema Akil
Radio Al Hara , ‘the neighborhood radio’, live streamed every day during the festival at Cinema Akil and Project Chaiwala. Radio Al Hara is a communal radio station project, which began in Bethlehem and Ramallah during the start of the lockdown. It is an open platform for listening, discussion and community building by artists, musicians and DJs performing globally.

Still Pasts
Yazan Kopty in collaboration with Dima Srouji, Milena Desse, and Vivien Sansour
Presented by Gulf Photo Plus & Reel Palestine

Gulf Photo Plus exhibited works curated by Yazan Kopty (Imagining the Holy) who collaborated with filmmakers Dima Srouji, Milena Desse, and Vivien Sansour in a series of conversations connecting archival images of Palestine with contemporary film. Using still fragments from the archive as prompts, they interrogated how images, both past and present, still and moving, have documented and driven the complex histories that are the subjects of their works.

Watch Conversations

Re-live the Magic of Reel Palestine 2021

Reel Palestine x Kave Workshops
in collaboration with and hosted by Kave

Silver Jewelry
Making Workshop
with Poras

Workshop guests were taken through the process of making silver jewelry in the shape of a map. Metals were sustainable silver and attendees walked away with their own keepsake.