by Rebecca Romani
April 10, 2025
Beautiful shorts and revealing personal stories close out the 15th annual San Diego Arab Film Festival screening this weekend at the Museum of Photographic Art in Balboa Park.
The film festival is an on-going project of Karama, an independent local non-profit that focuses on fostering greater understanding of the MENA- or Middle East and North African region.
This year’s festival focuses primarily on countries in the region currently experiencing major conflicts, says Larry Christian, Karama president, such as “Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen. Our opening and closing films are from Palestine. We thought it was important to have one that focused on Gaza (A State Of Siege) and one that focused on the West Bank (No Other Land). Plus, every screening will include a short from or about Palestine,” Christian told Vanguard.
Day 3:
Screenings continue April 11 (Friday) with one screening block which includes a short, Vibrations from Gaza (Palestine), and a feature, Flight 404 (Egypt).
Vibrations is a documentary which looks at how people with disabilities might deal with the dangers of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Director Rehab Nazzal is an award-winning sound and video artists based in Canada. Her works consistently look at the technology of war and its destructive effects on the environment, society, and the people involved. In this film, she looks at how the war technology employed in Gaza, including sonic weapons, and buzzing drones, affect the deaf children who experience them not as sound but as vibrations and the trembling of the earth.
Flight 404, a thriller, is a bit of a departure for Egypt, which has mostly produced comedies and a few serious dramas. Beautifully shot, the film has been praised for its structure, the story, and the quality of the acting- elevating it above the average Egyptian film. In addition, its soundtrack includes some iconic Egyptian songs, including an unusual Sufi piece, as well as some truly beautiful voices.
The story follows Ghada, who is about to leave for the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) in an effort to atone for actions in her past. However, her mother needs emergency surgery and Ghada needs a large sum of money to take care of her. To obtain what she needs, Ghada must return to her past and the people with whom she has severed ties. For Ghada, redemption has a price…
Flight 404 was Egypt’s submission to this year’s Oscars.
Day 4:
Block 1:
Saturday, the festival looks to North Africa for its feature. The screening starts off with Palestinian/Tunisian short, A Lullaby like No Other, directed by Amini Jaffer, a Tunisian scientist and director based in Sweden. This is Jaffer’s second short. As a Tunisian woman living in Sweden, Jaffer said she tried to put herself in her character’s shoes, following Nour, a young Palestinian woman, as she moves through a foreign city, remembering her family and worrying about her loved ones and her city.
Many have heard of the psychiatrist and extraordinary anti-colonial writer, Franz Fanon, but may not have been aware of Fanon’s work in Algeria. The fiction feature, which has the longest title of all the films, The True Chronicle from the Last Century at the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital When Dr. Frantz Fanon was Head of the Firth Ward, Between 1953-1956, is a close look at Fanon’s anti-colonial practices during the Algerian war for independence from France.
The film is directed by Algerian director Abdenour Zahzah, from Blida, the same city where the film takes place. Fanon, a Black French Psychiatrist from the French colony of Martinique (now a French department) was a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front. Fanon never saw Algeria’s liberation from France in 1962 because he died near the end of the war at the age of 36, in Maryland from pneumonia and complications from leukemia.
A respected anti-colonial intellectual, Fanon wrote several books such as The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skins, White Masks, that continue to influence decolonization discussions today.
Zahzah’s film, True Chronicle, his first feature, focuses on Fanon’s time in Blida, Algeria during the French occupation, where he observed the effects of France’s racists colonial policies on his Algerian patients.
Block 2:
Following the festival’s usual pattern, Day 4 has two viewing blocks. Is Anyone Alive? (Palestine) brings vivid focus to similar stories popping up on social media. Based on a true story, it follows a father in Gaza who tries to rescue his daughter after an Israeli bombing attack destroys his house. Director Omar Elemawi, from Gaza, is known for his documentaries and dramatic shorts.
Take My breath (Tunisia) is unusual for a North African film. According to Christian, the festival “also wanted to include films that are not about war, that show the breadth and humanity of Arab people and culture as well as the ways in which Arab creatives address issues and challenges in Arab society. […] we included, for example, the Tunisian film Take My Breath, which I think is the first Arab feature film that deals with an intersex person as she tries to find her way through a traditionally conservative society.
The film focuses on Shams, an intersex artist, who must find her way in the margins of Tunisian society. Director Nada Mezni Hafaierh has said in interviews that much of her work focuses on marginalized individuals. Her lead, Amina Ben Ismail, is an intersex model she found in an in-flight magazine as she was seeking someone to cast in the role.
Day 5:
The festival closes Sunday with two powerful screening blocks, including a feature by an award-winning team who have shown work at the festival before.
Block 1:
In Born a Celebrity (Palestine), Kamel is feeling trapped in a small Palestinian town in the West Bank, under the well-meaning but watchful eyes of his parents, relatives, and friends. Kamel wants to escape and be himself, but where can he go?
Praised for its story and acting, and beautifully shot, Born moves beyond the current conflict to look at life on a local level. The director, Luay Awwad, from Bethlehem, worked on Farah Nabulsi’s The Present, which also screened at the festival.
Bassima’s Womb is an unusually intimate look at when desires and events collide. The director, Babek Aliassa, an Iranian filmmaker based in Canada, has said in interviews, the film is based on surrogacy stories. The film follows Bassima, a young Syrian woman, whose non-resident husband has been deported from Canada. Desperate to bring him back, she agrees to become a surrogate mother for a false passport. But when Bassima finds out she is already pregnant, she is faced with an unthinkable choice.
Block 2:
Block two finishes the festival with a feature and a short.
In the short, Upshot (Palestine), directed by Maha Haj, Suleiman and Lubna, have chosen to retreat from the strife in Gaza to the relative peace of an isolated farm to heal from a profound loss. Their tranquil existence is soon disturbed by an unexpected visitor and the ghosts from the past he brings with him. Well-known Palestinian actor, Mohammed Bakri, stars as Suleiman.
Palestinian filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi are known for their delicate moving documentaries. Two of their most recent documentaries, Stitching Palestine and Aida Returns, screened at the festival in years past. This year, they return with a very timely documentary, A State of Passion, which looks at Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who has returned to Palestine multiple times to care for the victims of Israeli attacks. Why does he do it? Why does he take such risks, especially in the face of what has happened to Palestinian doctors at the hands of the IDF?
Khalidi and Mansour’s film is a rare look at what drives someone to do this type of work.
Capsule reviews:
Annie Sakkabi’s The Poem We Sang is a beautiful, visually stunning meditation on memory, nostalgia, and the pain of exile from Palestine. The piece is built on visual memories such as family pictures and elements of video as well as an old audio recording of a beloved uncle telling how the family was forced to leave Jerusalem as we as a powerful poem by Palestinian poet, Khalil Al-Sakakini, a family favorite. Sakkabi’s imaginative and masterful editing makes Poem an amazing visual work of art.
Palestine Islands (Palestine), is both charming and heartbreaking. Maha, the last of a generation of Palestinian refugees living in Balata Camp in the West Bank, desperately wants to make her aging blind grandfather smile again. To do that, she enlists her friends in an imaginative project to make him believe the separation wall has fallen and that a trip to his beloved ocean is possible.
Female singers of the Arab world are not that well-known in the West. Documentary maker and photographer Badr Yousef has created a gem of a film, Fariha, about a 70-year-old Yemeni singer, Fariha, who once had a promising career as a performer until social strictures forced her to step back. Eventually, Yousef convinces Fariha to return to the stage in a stunning comeback performance.
Tilka, evokes memories of the documentary Queens of Syria, with its portrait of an artist’s residency in the mountains outside of Beirut to help young women, many refugees, orphans, and displaced people, to work through their trauma and create an original piece of theatre. Director Myriam Geagea creates a very engaging portrait four young women who must work through considerable trauma to find themselves again through theatre and dance.
Arzé, Lebanese filmmaker Mira Shaib’s debut film has a lot of promise. The visuals are wonderful, beautifully framed and shot, but the story needs a stronger editing hand. Arzé is a single mother, struggling to survive in Beirut and raise her son by making food and delivering it. Desperate to improve their circumstances, she pawns her sister’s bracelet to buy a motor scooter for delivery. The scooter is solen, and Arzé and her son embark on a journey through Beirut’s multi-ethnic and religiously fractured neighborhoods to find it.
Parts are very amusing, and it is interesting to see Arzé find creative ways to negotiate a deeply complicated city, but the film sags in places, and could use a bit of a trim.
How to festival:
Parking is very accessible behind the Museum of Photographic Arts. If you go for both screening blocks, consider purchasing a traditional Arab dinner and mixing with other festival goers between the screenings.
Also, purchasing tickets in advance is advised as some films are sure to sell out soon.
For more information about films, screening times and tickets, please see https://sandiegoaff.org/
