A rare look into Palestinian life in contemporary Syria. Born on the Golan Heights, best friends Ezat and Bayan go on a journey to study in Syria. What starts out as an adventure to an unknown homeland leads to a search of identity and belonging.
Archives
Arab Labor – Season 1
Arab Labor
Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies second-rate work) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity as he seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched everyday when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.
Dove’s Cry
Hadeel, a charismatic Arab teacher, teaches Arabic in a Jewish elementary school. Her relationships with the pupils and staff enable both parties to have a unique glance at one another’s cultures, refute prejudices and dissolve fears. Yet, due to the complex Israeli reality, the meeting of these two cultures inevitably causes clashes. Back home, being 27 and a religious Muslim woman, Hadeel is being pressured to get married this year.
Mirror Image
In a pastoral house on the Israeli countryside live the filmmaker’s grandfather, grandmother, and a big crystal mirror that was taken from a Palestinian house during the Nakba – the depopulation of hundreds of thousand of Palestinians during and after the establishment of the state of Israel in the 1948 war. The story of the mirror is not a secret, but it remains untold. The filmmaker asks why is it that Jewish Israelis cannot address the mirror and others remnants of the Nakba, even when they are placed in the center of their lives? In this short conversation, the filmmaker and her grandparents negotiate the ways to tell the untold, staging an allegory for the position the Nakba takes in the realities of Israeli Jews.
Invisibles
Newly discharged from the Israeli Army, Ra’ed, a Bedouin from an unrecognizable village in the Negev desert, is determined to save his family’s failing herd of sheep, about to be sold. He plans to live off the herd by starting a roadside Bedouin hospitality restaurant.
Laila’s Birthday
Abu Laila used to be a judge, but because the government doesn’t have the means to renew his assignment, he is forced to be a taxi driver. On the day his daughter Laila becomes seven years old, his wife insists that he’ll be home early and bring her a present and a cake. Abu Laila’s has nothing else on his mind then completing this mission. But the daily life in Palestine has other plans.
Freeflow
Ahead of his father’s release from prison, the virtual reality of the Parkour world in which Avshalom is a super hero, starts to crack. The inevitable upcoming showdown with the man he testified against, is going to dictate his mother’s fate
Zahara
With touching personal style and breathtaking cinematography, Director Mohammad Bakri tells the story of his 78-year-old aunt Zahara, from the times of pre-state Israel to present, leading the family with love and wisdom through the many trials of life.
Sweets
The struggle between an Israeli corporation and an Arab entrepreneur for control of the candy market serves as an allegory for Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and its status in the international community.
