The Fourth Annual Jerusalem Arab Film Festival (JAFF), September 2024: “Our Story Lives On”

The fourth annual Jerusalem Arab Film Festival (JAFF) was successfully held in East Jerusalem from September 11 to 16, 2024.

Screenings and workshops were held at multiple venues: El-Hakawati (the Palestinian National Theatre), Dar al-Consul (a complex of the Custody of the Holy Land, located in the Old City), Souk al-Dabbagha, al-Ma‘mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Educational Bookshop, and the National Hotel.

The theme for this year’s event was “Our Story Lives On.” The idea was that the Palestinian story will continue despite the violent reality on the ground. As JAFF Director Nevin Shaheen told Jerusalem Story during the event, “Despite the horrible genocidal war on Gaza, we will continue to express our voices, document our experiences, and sustain dialogue with the world.”1

The image chosen for this year’s festival was the ibex, a wild goat with large, recurved horns found in the mountainous areas of Palestine. It is believed to have survived for over 100,000 years. This strong survivor was considered a fitting symbol of this year’s film festival.

“Drenched in the face of extraordinary circumstances, the ibex resembles the people of Palestine,” Nevin clarifies. Looking closely, one might notice that one of its legs appears to be injured. Still, it stands determined and tenacious.

Nevin recalled that last year, there had been some hesitation about launching the event in July because of tensions in the city. The living nightmares that followed three months later, however, were unimaginably horrific. Nevertheless, Nevin and her team (mostly comprising volunteers) made the decision to proceed with the festival this year while ensuring that it would be low-key; there would be no celebratory events—for example, no selection jury and no awards.

“Our hearts are absolutely crushed,” Nevin told Jerusalem Story. “Yet what we are seeing at the festival speaks to our perseverance against all odds and represents our collective solidarity—Palestinians together with our international friends. We stand together, despite all attempts at our eradication. May Jerusalem remain alive, with its loving people.”

Maryam Mira Da’as, 22, was pleased to have volunteered at JAFF in 2024. At the opening on September 11, she shared with Jerusalem Story that the festival has offered her the opportunity to meet local and international people in her beloved hometown.

“I’m so happy to be actively volunteering at this wonderful event this year,” she said. “It’s given me the chance to meet with amazing people from the city of Jerusalem; a city unlike any other—my home.”2

Manar Idrissi, arts and cultural manager (also dean of student affairs and faculty lecturer at Dar al-Kalima University), expressed the importance of holding such events despite ongoing threats: “Any cultural activity, regardless of its size, is highly significant for Palestinians of Jerusalem,” she told Jerusalem Story. “In light of the ongoing distortion of the city (such as changing street names and attempts to erase its history), arts and culture become a mode of resistance. They become the tools by which we persevere.”3

The Palestinian National Theatre El-Hakawati was filled to capacity on opening night for the screening of the feature film The Teacher, by Farah Nabulsi (Drama, 2023, 1 hr 55 min).

The film’s two leading actors, Saleh Bakri and Muhammad Abed Elrahman, attended the screening and stayed for a discussion with the audience. There was simultaneous interpretation available, which allowed for a good range of questions and comments. The audience stayed in the hall until almost 11:00 p.m.

The Teacher is set in present-day Nablus. In the film, Muhammad Abed Elrahman plays the part of Adam, a high-school student whose brother was shot in cold blood by an Israeli settler. Adam’s English teacher, Basem al-Saleh (played by Saleh Bakri), is something of a father figure for the boy, and he struggles to reconcile his commitment to political resistance with his need to protect his student.

The audience shared the anger and sorrow portrayed in the film, yet they also chuckled through a couple of scenes that show the absurd reality of living under occupation.

“This was the most joy I ever experienced at the screening of this film,” shared Muhammad Abed Elrahman. “To be watching this film screened for the first time among a Palestinian crowd was an awe-inspiring experience.”

A selection of important Palestinian films were screened during the festival, including Michel Khleifi’s Tale of the Three Jewels (Drama, 1995, 1 hr 52 min) from almost 30 years ago (which captures a story from the First Intifada and was the first feature film ever to be shot entirely in the Gaza Strip), and Mai Masri’s film about life for teenagers in refugee camps in Beirut and Bethlehem, Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (Documentary, 2001, 56 min).

A poignant moment occurred with the screening of Yousry Nasrallah’s Bab al-Shams (The Gate of the Sun) (Drama, 2004, 4 hr 38 min), based on the novel by Lebanese author Elias Khoury. The film screened on Saturday, September 14, 2024, at El-Hakawati Theatre.

The very next day, September 15, Elias Khoury passed away in Lebanon. JAFF paid tribute to this moment on its Facebook page, saying “Although he is gone today, the works of Elias Khoury will remain immortal in the memory of Arabic literature, and Bab al-Shams remains a witness to his superior ability to convey human issues and resistance in an influential language.”4

Short films were screened throughout East Jerusalem, including in the Old City. Some aspiring filmmakers who had participated in last year’s workshops got the chance to develop their ideas and continue their creative journey. A few of the students who had participated in filmmaker Sahera Dirbas’s scriptwriting workshop in the summer of 2023 attended the festival this year and described how the workshop had helped them to tackle their film projects in a more consistent and efficient manner.

As one young participant who hopes to develop her story into a feature-length film put it, “It was through the scriptwriting workshop last year that I started to visualize my idea and started to craft it into life.”

Workshops were part of this year’s festival, too:

• Sahera Dirbas led a scriptwriting workshop whose focus was on successfully creating films that are gender sensitive.
• Filmmaker Mahasen Nasser-Eldin shared her expertise in exploring the world of cinema and seeing its impact on societies and identities.
• Film director Yousef Salhi focused on short films and on filmmaking on a low budget.
• Researcher, architect, and anthropologist Ghadeer Najjar led a workshop on cinema in Jerusalem during the British Mandate.
• French writer and director Serge Le Péron discussed feature and documentary films, with a focus on Palestinian cinema.

The closing film, Bye Bye Tiberias (Documentary, 2023, 1 hr 22 min), screened to a full house—with the presence of well-known personalities in Jerusalem as well as international friends from Italy, France, and other countries—at El-Hakawati on September 16, 2024. This film was based on the real-life experience of the globally renowned Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, from the Palestinian village of Deir Hanna (in the Galilee) who chose to pursue acting in France at the age of 23. The film, directed by Abbass’s own daughter, Lina Soualem, includes family videos that offer an intimate portrayal of the family’s four generations of women. It goes back to the family’s expulsion from Tiberias in 1948 and reflects the sense of loss emanating from conflict and colonialism.

The film had lighthearted and comical moments, but it also triggered tears: In the discussion that followed, many comments were made about how the tragedy of the Nakba (a major theme of the film) is ongoing today with the forcible displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and beyond, not to mention the brutal war on Gaza.

The venue, Jerusalem’s El-Hakawati Theatre, featured in the film, as did its director, Amer Khalil (a lifelong friend of Hiam Abbass and her family), which made the film a bit more personal for the Palestinian Jerusalemites in the audience. Three of Abbass’s siblings, who appeared in the film, participated in an intimate discussion that followed.

The film festival provided an opportunity for Palestinian Jerusalemites to come together to appreciate the creative expression of Palestinian directors and actors, and as such it provided a necessary respite, especially welcome during these surreal and dark times.

As soon as the festival ended in Jerusalem, FilmLab Palestine launched another weeklong film festival in the rest of Palestine, with screenings in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Haifa, Shafa-‘Amr, and Hebron.

And JAFF prepared to present two mobile cinema productions on September 19 and 28, 2024, at al-Ma‘mal Foundation and Al-Quds University in the Old City.

And thus, “our story lives on.”