san diego
arab film festival

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welcome to the 13th annual
san diego arab film festival!

April 12-21, 2024

Days
Hours
Minutes
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Tickets are on sale now, with individual screenings at $15 (discounted to $12 for students), 3-ticket packages for $40 and passes for all 8 screenings for $80. Arabic dinners will be available each evening for $15.

click here to view festival schedule
Buy Tickets

Online ticket sales close the morning of the event.

Tickets will be available at the door until sold out.

San diego Arab Film Festival

The San Diego Arab Film Festival is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Stephanie Jennings, friend, comrade and activist.

lineup AND SCHEDULE

The San Diego Arab Film Festival is back for 2024 with live, in-person presentations of feature length and short films at the Museum of Photographic Arts.  The festival will open on Friday, April 12, 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!

This event has passed.

 

Friday, April 12, 7:20 PM

I AM FROM PALESTINE
By Iman Zawahry

As Saamidah, a young Palestinian-American girl, anxiously starts her first day of school, she finds her identity in question when faced with a world map that does not include her homeland of Palestine. In this poignant, short animation, Iman Zawahry...

A HOUSE IN JERUSALEM
By Muayad Alayan

Following the death of her mother in a car accident, ten-year-old Rebecca moves with her father Michael from the UK to Jerusalem in search of a fresh start. There, they take up residence in a villa left to Michael by his father, in a neighborhood of West...

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Online ticket sales for this event have closed, but tickets will continue to be on sale at the door.

Saturday, April 13, 6:10 PM

A CALLING . FROM THE DESERT . TO THE SEA
By Murad Abu Eisheh

Fearing that her younger sister will be married off just like she was, Ahlam lures Yasmin to run away with her by telling a story of a mythical sea that lies beyond the desolate desert and its mountains. In search of this sea, the two sisters journey far from...

MACHTAT
By Sonia Ben Slama

A trio of female wedding singers find freedom in their art in this evolving Tunisian documentary. In a small Tunisian town, filmmaker Director Sonia Ben Slama chronicles the daily lives of Fatma and her daughters Najeh and Waffeh, “Machtat,” or...

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Online ticket sale for this event have closed, but tickets will continue to be on sale at the door.

Saturday, April 13, 8:25 PM

THAT SEVEN DAYS
By Ehsan Shademani

A Palestinian couple living in Gaza is preparing for their wedding when an event changes their life story. After this incident, the Palestinian bride is reviewing her memories of the joys and sorrows of the 7 days leading up to the...

AIDA RETURNS
By Carol Mansour

Aida Returns is a poignant, sometimes sad, sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, often absurd story of a multiple journey: the journey of loss as the director's mother Aida struggled with losing herself to Alzheimer's disease, but finding...

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Friday, April 19, 7:20 PM

THE TIME WE MEET
By Liyan Kaawach

A man enjoys his morning tea in his home, located in the Palestinian village of Meiroun. He is then interrupted by a taciturn stranger taking pictures of his home. Despite the man’s multiple attempts to converse with the stranger, the latter maintains...

FEZ SUMMER '55
By Abdelhaï Laraki

Summer 1955. Kamal, an 11 year old boy of the Medina of Fez, is experiencing the last months before Morocco's independence. In contact to Aïcha and her fellow students of the Qaraouiyine university, he discovers and takes part in the fight...

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Saturday, April 20, 6:00 PM

M'DINA
By Jan Hamshoro

"M'dina" is an experimental documentary that captures everyday scenery through the lens of a foreigner in the old city in Tunisia. Life in this mystic place though it might seem exotic is a narrative as old as time: humans with their hopes and dreams...

DANCING ON THE EDGE OF A VOLCANO
By Cyril Aris

On August 4th, 2020, the catastrophic explosion at the port of Beirut leaves a large part of the Lebanese capital in ruins. In the midst of the chaos, a troubled film crew faces an overwhelming decision: to continue the production of their movie or abandon...

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Saturday, April 20, 8:15 PM

PHONE BREAKER
By Hamza Atifi

To avenge his mother and rid his living space of invading telephones, Jalil, a washed-up employee, becomes the "Phone Breaker" and leads a ruthless vendetta against the telecommunications industry.

THE BURDENED
By Amr Gamal

Based on true events that take place in Aden around 2019, the film follows the struggles of a married couple and their three children after both husband and wife lose their jobs as a result of the country’s economic crisis. After the mother...

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Sunday, April 21, 5:30 PM

FATHER'S FOOTSTEPS
By Mohamad W. Ali

In the Syrian War, a woman lost her husband and tries to hide the truth from her tongue-tied (mute) child by acting the father role, facing life alone trying to protect her family.

DOUNIA AND THE PRINCESS OF ALEPPO
By Marya Zarif, André Kadi

An animated film that merges reality and magic, the film tells the story of Dounia, a 6 year old who lives in Aleppo, a thousand-year-old legendary city in the heart of the world. But one day, war breaks out. So she leaves Aleppo with a few nigella seeds in her...

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Sunday, April 21, 7:35 PM

MAR MAMA
By Majdi El Omari

With her mother's death and recurring attacks by Israeli forces on her city, a young girl becomes obsessed with death. Her father makes a film to distract her but he fails and the girl finds nothing but imagination to escape from reality.

LYD
By Rami Younis, Sarah Friedland

This feature-length, sci-fi documentary shares multiple pasts, presents, and futures of the city of Lyd in Palestine. Lyd was once a thriving Palestinian city with a rich history. In 636AD, it was even considered the first capital of Palestine. In 1948, hundreds of Lyd’s Palestinian residents were massacred by...

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Financial support is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

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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…

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Highlights

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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.

MESSAGE

NO OTHER LAND

Synopsis

A determined female reporter in a war-torn Gaza, facing poor internet conditions, decides to take all her memory cards to her colleague in the news agency building. She hopes he can send the videos. She faces obstacles along the way…

Synopsis

Since childhood Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community’s mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation to make way for Israeli settlements. For half a decade, he has been filming its gradual erasure, as soldiers destroy the homes of families – the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. In the process, he crossed paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joined his struggle. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. This film was created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice.  It has been nominated for an Academy Award.

PALESTINE ISLANDS

TILKA

Synopsis

Maha, a 12-year-old girl, is part of the final generation of Palestinian refugees from the Balata Camp. After seeing her blind grandfather faint, she imagines a crazy project: To make him believe that the Wall of Separation has fallen, thereby making a return to his native land possible. With the help of her friends from the camp, the young girl plans a fun trip for him.

Synopsis

Tilka is an intimate portrait of five women navigating multiple crises in Lebanon: prolonged economic collapse, a global pandemic and the aftermath of the Beirut port blast. Najah, Tima, Rania, Fatima and Fida meet in March 2021 for an artist’s residency in the mountains outside Beirut, coming together to create an original piece of theatre. As the country grapples with the collapse, they weave together a story inspired by their experiences as women fighting against the odds for their rights.

FARIHA

Synopsis

“Fariha” (meaning ‘Joy’ in Arabic) is a short documentary about 70-year-old Fariha – a woman from Yemen – who stepped out of the limelight of a burgeoning singing career in the 80s after a series of set-backs within a male-dominated society and industry. When filmmaker Badr stumbles upon her singing in her kiosk in downtown Sana’a, he insists on following her with his camera to learn about her past and ultimately tries to convince her to return to her long-lost passion: performing on stage.

THE POEM
WE SANG

ARZE

Synopsis

The Poem We Sang is a 20-minute, color and black and white, experimental documentary that meditates on love and longing – the love of one’s family and the longing for one’s home, contemplated through overcoming the trauma of loss of family home and of forced migration, transforming lifelong regrets into a healing journey of creative catharsis and bearing witness. The Poem We Sang is at once deeply personal and fiercely nostalgic – a tribute to the director’s uncle my family, and an ode to their lost family home in Palestine.

Synopsis

Arzé is a struggling single mother living in Beirut with her agoraphobic older sister and teenage son, Kinan. Supporting the family by making homemade pies delivered on foot by her son, Arzé knows that the business can only sustain them for so long. In a move of desperation, she steals her sister’s cherished bracelet to pawn for the down payment on a delivery scooter. But disaster strikes when the scooter is stolen, jeopardizing her only way to provide for her family. Up against a ticking clock to either find the scooter or a way to pay for it in full, Arzé and Kinan embark on a wild journey through the turbulent but vibrant, multiethnic Levantine capital in pursuit of the pilfered moped. 

VIBRATIONS FROM GAZA

FLIGHT 404

Synopsis

The director offers a glimpse into the life of deaf children who live and have grown up in the besieged and occupied Gaza Strip under repeated Israeli aggression. The children’s voices vividly convey how they experience the bombings, destruction, and drone buzz overhead. The film raises the question of whether the deafness they face is a natural condition or a consequence of Israel’s use of heavy weaponry, including sonic weapons.

Synopsis

Days before she travels to Mecca for HAJJ, Ghada is faced with an emergency and is needed to come up with a large sum of money. She is forced to return to people from a tainted past with which she had severed ties. Will things go smoothly, will she be able to solve her problem and make it to HAJJ? Or will returning to the past contaminate her again?

A LULLABY UNLIKE ANY OTHER

THE TRUE CHRONICLE

Synopsis

Nour, a young Palestinian woman, is pursuing her studies in Sweden. She wanders the streets of Stockholm realizing that she has lost something dear to her as she retraces her steps, reminiscing over the trauma inflicted by the occupation, the memories of her family, and a lullaby long since lost.

Synopsis

Full Title: The True Chronicle from the Last Century at the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital when Dr. Frantz Fanon Was Head of the Fifth Ward, Between 1953 and 1956

1953, colonized Algeria.

Fanon, a young black psychiatrist is appointed head doctor at the Blida-Joinville Hospital. He was putting his theories of ‘Institutional Psychotherapy’ into practice in opposition to the racist theories of the Algies School of Psychiatry, while a war broke out in his own wards.

IS ANYONE ALIVE?

TAKE MY BREATH

Synopsis

When a bombing destroys his house, a father gets stuck under the rubble and desperately looks for help to save his injured daughter. Inspired by true events.

Synopsis

Shams, an intersex person living as a woman, must live in the shadows. At 23, life is steeped in secrecy and unimaginable pain. Stripped of the right to exist, Shams is shunned by true love and rejected by society’s rigid norms and expectations.

BORN A CELEBRITY

BASSIMA'S WOMB

Synopsis

Feeling confined in his small Palestinian town and close-knit community, Kamel, a young man, embarks on a journey to discover his personal freedom and privacy.

Synopsis

When her illegal husband is deported from Canada, Bassima, a young Syrian woman, finds herself in a difficult situation, both socially and financially. Desperately looking for a way to bring her husband back, she agrees to become a surrogate mother in exchange for a false passport. However, she soon finds out that she is already pregnant and must give up her own child.

UPSHOT

A STATE OF PASSION

Synopsis

Set against the backdrop of Gaza’s enduring strife, UPSHOT tells the story of Suleiman and Lubna, a couple who retreat to an isolated farm shrouded in mist as they grapple with profound loss. Their fragile escape is disrupted by an unexpected visitor who brings a harrowing revelation from their past, challenging the delicate fantasy they’ve built.

Synopsis

After 43 horrific days working round the clock under constant bombardment in the emergency rooms of Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals, British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, emerged to find himself as a face of Palestinian resistance.   

This was Ghassan’s sixth and most horrific Gaza “war”.  Why does he do it?  Where does he find the strength to face it again and again? How does it impact his family? How do they process the risks he takes? The answer lies simply in their shared passion: Palestine, a passion they articulate through their support of his perilous humanitarian work.  

Filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi were determined to capture his raw emotions. They began filming him the moment he arrived and, following him to Beirut, Amman, London, Kuwait and Dubai, they and he explore their common State of Passion.