San Diego Arab Film Festival

Welcome to the 14th Annual San Diego Arab Film Festival!

Tickets are on sale now, with individual screenings at $15 (discounted to $12 for students), 3-ticket packages for $40 and Festival passes for all 8 screenings for $80. Arabic dinners will be available each evening for $18.

Schedule:

6:10pm

PALESTINE ISLANDS by Nour Ben Salem, Julien Menanteau

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.

Fariha By Badr Yousef

"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.

TILKA By Myriam Geagea

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.

8:30 PM

THE POEM WE SANG By Annie Sakkab

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.

Arze By Mira Shaib

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.

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