Tickets are on sale now, including individual screenings at $15 (discounted to $10 for students), 3-ticket packages for $40 and passes for all 8 screenings for $80. Arabic dinners (including vegetarian option) will be available each evening for $15. Click here to purchase
Online ticket sales close the morning of the event.
Tickets will be available at the door until sold out.
The San Diego Arab Film Festival is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Stephanie Jennings, friend, comrade and activist.
The San Diego Arab Film Festival is back for 2023 with live, in-person presentations of feature length and short films at the Museum of Photographic Arts. The festival will open on Friday, March 3, and present 8 screenings, each showcasing one feature film and one short film, from across the Arab World. Each evening, the festival will also offer cafeteria-style Arabic dinner.
We are excited to bring these films to the San Diego community!
In a Palestinian town, Tamer and his friends lead a typical high school student’s life until the arrival of the beautiful Maysaa’. To please her, Tamer agrees to take part in a mysterious flag operation .......
Friday, March 3, 7:30 PM
In Sudan near the Merowe Dam, Maher works in a traditional brickyard fed by the waters of the Nile. Every evening, he secretly wanders off into the desert to build a mysterious construction made of mud....
Saturday, March 4, 6:15 PM
Maia, a single mother, lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter, Alex. On Christmas Eve, they receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, tapes, and photos Maia sent to her best friend from 1980’s Beirut....
Saturday, March 4, 8:30 PM
SARA is a single mother and novelist, shocked into silence, at a time of extreme sectarian violence and nightly curfews in Baghdad. She and her neighbours let us into their everyday lives, as they struggle to resist the ....
Friday, March 10, 7:30 PM
In the shade of trees, a strong bond flourishes between the young summer harvest workers. Between flirting, feelings of attraction and denial, a deep connection develops between the young men and women as they ...
Saturday, March 11, 6:00 PM
From Aleppo to the Ghetto. Jacir follows the life of a young Syrian refugee on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee as he faces the hard truth in chasing the American dream, while living in poverty, witnessing social injustice......
Saturday, March 11, 8:30 PM
It is the mid-1990s. In a small town in the north of Morocco, Fouad is the only employee of the local post office. When he is stricken from neurological disease, his life changes, and a new life begins .....
Sunday, March 12, 5:30 PM
Mediterranean Fever: In this wry, absurdist tale of mid-life restlessness, husband and father Waleed dreams of becoming a successful novelist yet is plagued by a severe case of writer’s block. ...
Sunday, March 12 7:45 PM
Financial support is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
Tickets are on sale now, including individual screenings at $15 (discounted to $10 for students), 3-ticket packages for $40 and passes for all 8 screenings for $80. Arabic dinners (including vegetarian option) will be available each evening for $15. Click here to purchase
Online ticket sales close the morning of the event.
Tickets will be available at the door until sold out.
This year the Festival offers short films from across the Arab world representing a range of styles and genres. The final line up includes films that have been screened at Cannes as well as other international festivals. They include Hibernate and From the Mountain from Syria, Merge from Saudi Arabia, Ashes (Cendres) fromTunisia, Bouchaib from Morocco, Warsha from Lebanon, Hamza: Chasing the Ghost Chasing Me. from Palestine and Virtual Voice from Sudan and Qatar.
With the help of a young Tunisian guide, a retired French soldier sets out into the desert on a quest for redemption.
Friday, March 3, 7:30 PM
A poor Syrian kid with a great love for music sees a young woman playing accordion so he starts chasing her to get into a music institution where he can make his dream of being an accordion player comes true.
Saturday, March 4, 6:15 PM
Bouchaib, a Moroccan child who joined the French school after a passage to the Koranic school, will live the experience of identity alienation which will not even spare his name.
Saturday, March 4, 8:30 PM
After recovering from an illness, middle-aged Hamza resumes a practice he began when he was released from an Israeli prison 20 years ago. Every day, he goes into the woods to hunt the lion that the locals don’t believe exists.
Friday, March 10, 7:30 PM
Warsha follows Mohammad, a Syrian migrant working as a crane operator in Beirut. One morning he volunteers to take on one of the tallest and notoriously most dangerous cranes in Lebanon. Away from everyone’s eyes, he is able to live out his secret passion and find freedom.
Saturday, March 11, 6:00 PM
Historical narrative film about the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925 and its leader Sultan Basha Al Atrash’s quest for justice against French colonial oppression.
Saturday, March 11, 8:30 PM
This is a satirical review of our times. Suzi doll is an ego-warrior. An online avatar, marching to the algorithms of social media, she is lit by temporary outrage, a trending indignation, a passion that is fashion, a politics of the popular. Her activism is abstract, her help is hypothetical.
Sunday, March 12, 5:30 PM
In a time where Saudi society is undergoing drastic changes, Ahmad, early 30s, sees the reflection of these in the company where he works when male ad female departments are merged.
Sunday, March 12, 7:45 PM
KARAMA’s vision is to grow the San Diego Arab Film Festival into a major cultural event that enhances the identity, perception and understanding of the Arab and the Arab world. Doing so will require time, energy and money. You can help in multiple ways…
Interview by Beth Accomando / Arts & Culture Reporter.
Listen to Larry Christian and Maha Gebara talk about the 12th Annual Arab Film Festival which kicks off Friday night with in-person screenings and themed food at MOPA.
When Netflix announced its release of Farha, it was greeted with a coordinated campaign to downvote its ratings online and a social media campaign calling on people to cancel their subscriptions to Netflix.
2022-2023 is the eighth year that the San Diego Arab Film Festival is receiving support from the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. This recognition and support represents an important milestone f
For all inquires, please fill out the form and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. We’ll be happy to answer all of your questions.
Tamer is a Palestinian teenager living in Israel. He and his friends lead a typical high school student’s life until the arrival of the beautiful Maysaa’. To seduce her, Tamer agrees to take part in a mysterious flag operation on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day which is a mourning day for Palestinians.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
In this film I wish to give prominence to the Palestinian youth, who have willingly and despite all chosen to turn their peaceful struggle against injustice their primary vocation. High school students with courageous souls have become a great source of inspiration to me, since I began following and observing them in recent years. My aim in this film is to expose their struggle to define and reinvent themselves, as well as to bring forth their personal story. I wish to show the world that a Palestinian teenager is no different from any other around the world, they have similar dreams and aspirations, and they seek to embark on new experiences, to find love and recognition while transforming into adults. This, I believe, would contribute to how Palestinians are perceived beyond the eye of the media. It is also an attempt to bring into light under which circumstances the Palestinian youth is forced to develop, the sharp existential contradictions they are subjected to at a young age. In that sense, ALAM is a story of a collective, embodied in the life of a young man (Tamer), who wishes to step out of the safe zone of passive fear into the light of freedom. But as always, freedom does not come without sacrifice. Tamer will know freedom only if he is willing to pay the price.
Sudan, near the Merowe Dam. Maher works in a traditional brickyard fed by the waters of the Nile. Every evening, he secretly wanders off into the desert to build a mysterious construction made of mud. While the Sudanese people rise to claim their freedom, his creation slowly starts to take a life of its own…
Born in Beirut, Ali Cherri is a visual artist and filmmaker living in Paris. Combining films, videos, sculptures and installation, his work examines the construction of historical narratives. Ali is the Artist in Residence at the National Gallery in London (2021/22) and has been awarded with the Silver Lion for promising artist at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2022). His short films The Disquiet and The Digger have been shown in prominent film festivals. The Dam, a fiction shot in Sudan during the revolution, is his debut feature film.
Maia, a single mother, lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter, Alex. On Christmas Eve, they receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, tapes, and photos Maia sent to her best friend from 1980’s Beirut. Maia refuses to open the box or confront its memories, but Alex secretly begins diving into it. Between fantasy and reality, Alex enters the world of her mother’s tumultuous, passionate adolescence during the Lebanese civil war, unlocking mysteries of a hidden past.
OUR RIVER…OUR SKY is an ensemble film of intersecting stories that takes place in the last week of 2006 – between Christmas and New Year. It tells the stories of ordinary Iraqis trying to live their everyday lives amidst intense unpredictable sectarian violence. The central character of the film – described by KQED (USA) as a “fiction writer played with great charm and heart by Darina Al Joundi” is a single mother and novelist, who struggles to make sense of the fragmentation of her world. Shortly before the New Year, following the unexpected news of Saddam Hussein’s execution, Sara and her neighbors brace themselves for an uncertain future while trying to sustain a fragile sense of hope.
In the shade of trees, a strong bond flourishes between the young summer harvest workers.
Between flirting, feelings of attraction and denial, a deep connection develops between the young men and women as they try to
understand one another.
From Aleppo to the Ghetto. Jacir follows the life of a young Syrian refugee (Malek Rahbani) on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee as he faces the hard truth in chasing the American dream, while living in poverty, witnessing social injustice and his neighbor’s (Lorraine Bracco) opioid addiction.
The international cast of “Jacir” includes Lebanese new comer, Malek Rahbani, Memphis Native Darius “Tutweezy” Tutwiler, and Oscar Nominee Lorraine Bracco. “Jacir” is produced by Mariana Trevino and AlQawasmi. With Larry Tolbert, Martin Kelman, Ron Lazarov, Jill and Scott Notowich serving as executive producers.
The exquisite Original Score was created by Justin Toland, with Original Rap and Blues songs written by Al Kapone and produced by Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell. “JACIR” was filmed on location in Memphis, Tennessee.
It is the mid-1990s. In a small town in the north of Morocco, Fouad is the only employee of the local post office. When he is stricken from neurological disease, his life changes, and a new life begins for Fouad, his wife, and their children. Their home will be filled with love, sorrow, and memories. While Fouad is slowly dying, his family members rediscover themselves. As time goes by, the wounds begin to surface – but the desire to live is inextinguishable.
Mediterranean Fever: In this wry, absurdist tale of mid-life restlessness, husband and father Waleed dreams of becoming a successful novelist yet is plagued by a severe case of writer’s block. Neither his therapist nor his family are able to offer much support, but when he forges an unlikely connection with his new neighbor, petty criminal Jalal, his fortunes seem to shift. Under the auspices of research for his next novel, Waleed tags along with Jalal on his illicit daily routine, leading to a series of fraught situations that find Waleed out of his depth.