Mahdi Fleifel | |
|---|---|
 Mahdi Fleifel in 2013 | |
| Born | |
| Nationality | Danish |
| Alma mater | National Film and Television School at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire |
| Occupation | Filmmaker |
| Years active | 2003 – present |
| Website | http://nakbafilmworks.com |
Mahdi Fleifel (born 25 October 1979 at Dubai) is a Danish-Palestinian film director. Often examining themes of social injustice, Fleifel's films largely convey the struggles of Palestinians in exile.
Mahdi Fleifel was raised in the refugee camp Ein el-Helweh in Lebanon and later in a suburb of Helsingør in Denmark. In 2009, he graduated from the National Film and Television School at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. In 2010, he set up the London-based production company Nakba FilmWorks. [1]
His debut feature documentary, A World Not Ours, picked up several awards. [2] His short film, A Man Returned, won the Silver Bear and the European Film Nomination at the Berlinale and his film, A Drowning Man, was in the Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival 2017. [3]
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | A World Not Ours (Alam laysa lana) | Feature film |
| 2014 | Xenos | Short film |
| 2015 | 20 Handshakes for Peace | Short film |
| 2016 | A Man Returned | Short film |
| 2017 | A Drowning Man | Short film |
| 2018 | I Signed the Petition | Short film |
| 2020 | 3 Logical Exits | Short film |
| 2024 | To a Land Unknown | Feature film |
Elias Khoury was a Lebanese novelist and advocate of the Palestinian cause. His novels and literary criticism have been translated into several languages. In 2000, he won the Prize of Palestine for his book Gate of the Sun, and he won the Al Owais Award for fiction writing in 2007. Khoury also wrote three plays and two screenplays.
Cinema of Palestine refers to films made in Palestine and/or by Palestinian filmmakers. Palestinian films are not exclusively produced in Arabic and some are produced in English and French.
Benny Brunner is an Israeli-Dutch filmmaker, born in Bârlad, Romania and based in Amsterdam since 1986. He studied film at Tel Aviv University. Since the late 1980s, Brunner has written, directed and produced films about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including The Concrete Curtain, It Is No Dream, Al-Nakba and The Great Book Robbery, films about Jewish history like The Seventh Million, and films concerning the modern history of the Middle East. He describes himself as "a veteran leftist" and his political films take the side of the 'other'. Brunner has worked in the Middle East, Europe, South Africa, and the United States. In addition to winning a special commendation by the Prix Europa for A Philosopher for All Seasons in 1991, his films have been screened at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the Jerusalem Film Festival, the San Diego Jewish Film Festival, and numerous international, human rights and Jewish film festivals.
Muzahim Ameen al-Pachachi was an Iraqi politician who served as Prime Minister of Iraq during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Ibrahim Fawal was a Palestinian-American academic, former professor, and author of the historical novel On the Hills of God, about the experiences of a young Palestinian man during the Nakba, or "catastrophe" of 1948. He lived in Birmingham, Alabama.
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948 is a documentary film of Benny Brunner and Alexandra Jansse. It follows the events that surround the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. It was filmed in 1996, is 58 minutes long and is in English. Based on the book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 by Benny Morris, it is the first documentary film to examine the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians during the birth of the state of Israel. The film shifts between interviews with Palestinian refugees and the reactions of Irgun and Haganah soldiers who witnessed and participated in the events of 1948.
Hisham Zreiq, also spelled Zrake, is a Palestinian-Israeli Independent filmmaker, poet, animator and visual artist. He began working in computer art in 1994, and in 1996 started exhibiting his work in galleries and museums. In 2007 he filmed his first documentary, The Sons of Eilaboun, and in 2008 he created the short film Just Another Day, dealing with the life of Arabs living in western world after the September 11 terror attacks. He uses his poetry and visual art in his films, as in Just Another Day, and was a member of the Culture Unplugged film festival panel. In 2018 Zreiq contributed to the book An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba by writing a chapter based on the interviews from his documentary The Sons of Eilaboun. In 2023 he started a music project called 'Goddess Asherah'
In the 1948 Palestine war, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of Mandatory Palestine's predominantly Arab population – were expelled or fled from their homes, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of Israel, by its military. The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba. Dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted by Israeli military forces and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme codenamed Operation Cast Thy Bread and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. Other sites were subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names.
Nakba Day in 2011 was the annual day of commemoration for the Palestinian people marking the Nakba—the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Generally held on May 15, commemorative events in 2011 began on May 10, in the form of march by Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel on Israel's Independence Day. On May 13, clashes between stone-throwing youths and Israeli security forces in East Jerusalem resulted in one Palestinian fatality, and clashes continued there and in parts of the West Bank in the days following.
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is an annual non-fiction film festival held in Missoula, Montana each February. The event showcases documentary films from around the world. The festival first began in 2003 as a seven-day event. It is now a ten-day event. The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is the largest cinema event in Montana. The festival presents an average of 150 non-fiction films annually at the historic Wilma Theater, The Top Hat, The Roxy Theater, and Crystal Theater in downtown Missoula.
The DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival (DCPFAF) is a non-profit, volunteer-run annual film festival established in 2011 that showcases the work of Palestinian filmmakers and artists in Palestine and in diaspora, showcasing the range and complexity of Palestinian identities and narratives.
The Beitunia killings refers to the consecutive killings of two Palestinian teenagers which took place on the occasion of the annual Nakba Day protests on May 15, 2014, near the Israeli Ofer Prison outside Beitunia in the occupied West Bank. Israel described the protest as a riot in which a crowd refused to disperse, and initially denied responsibility, saying the cause of the deaths was unknown, the deaths were faked, that video clips of the killings either failed to capture the violence of the scene shortly before or might have been manipulated, that soldiers had been provoked, and that only rubber bullets had been fired.
On the Side of the Road is a 2013 Israeli documentary film written and directed by Lia Tarachansky. The film focuses on Israeli collective denial of the events of 1948 that led to the country's Independence and the Palestinian refugee problem. It follows war veterans Tikva Honig-Parnass and Amnon Noiman as they tackle their denial of their actions in the war. The film also tells the story of the director, Lia Tarachansky, an Israeli who grew up in a settlement in the West Bank but as an adult began to realize the problems of the Israeli Occupation for the Palestinians. The film was shot over the course of five years and premiered at the First International Independent Film Festival in Tel Aviv.
Nakba Day is the day of commemoration for the Nakba, also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, which comprised the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian people. It is generally commemorated on 15 May, the Gregorian calendar date of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. For Palestinians, it is an annual day of commemoration of the displacement that preceded and followed Israel's establishment.
The Nakba is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society and the suppression of their culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is used to describe the events of the 1948 Palestine war in Mandatory Palestine as well as the ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians by Israel. As a whole, it covers the fracturing of Palestinian society and the long-running rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
Farha is a 2021 internationally co-produced historical drama film about a Palestinian girl's coming-of-age experience during the Nakba, the 1948 displacement of Palestinians from their homeland. The film is directed by Darin J. Sallam, who also wrote it based on a true story that she was told as a child about a girl named Radieh. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on 14 September 2021 and began streaming on Netflix on 1 December 2022.
"Ongoing Nakba" is a historiographical framework and term that interprets the Palestinian "Nakba" or "catastrophe" as a still emerging and unfolding phenomenon. The phrase emerged in the late 1990s and its first public usage is widely credited to Hanan Ashrawi, who referred to it in a speech at the 2001 World Conference against Racism. The term was later adopted by scholars such as Joseph Massad and Elias Khoury. As an intellectual framework, the "ongoing Nakba" narrative reflects the conceptualisation of the Palestinian experience not as a series of isolated events, but as "a continuous experience of violence and dispossession", or as other have termed it, the "recurring loss" of the Palestinian people.
I Signed the Petition is a Palestinian short documentary film with a duration of 11 minutes, directed by Mahdi Fleifel and produced in 2018. The film addresses a significant political issue from the director's personal experience, namely the solidarity with Palestinians through signing a petition calling for a cultural boycott of Israel.
To a Land Unknown is a 2024 drama film, directed and co-written by Mahdi Fleifel.
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