When Netflix announced its release of Farha (directed by Jordanian-Palestinian Darin Sallam) Jordan’s official submission to the International Feature Film for the 2023 Oscars, 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.
Why? Because Farha is centered on the story of a teenage girl in 1948 who witnessed her family being killed by Zionist militia members.
In response to the campaign by hundreds of spam accounts to discredit the film online, a grassroots campaign in support of the film effectively countered the negative campaign. The result? Farha is still available on Netflix and is available for streaming now.
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.
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.
