Looking for great Arab cinema, but not in the San Francisco Bay Area? You are in luck! AFF2024 includes a Virtual Festival alongside our in-person screenings. The 2024 Arab Film Festival Online Program includes a selection of features, shorts, and other programs.
Online films and programs become available on Friday October 25th at 12:00 am PDT, except for the new AFMI Forums which have specific dates (see below). After the content becomes available, you’ll have 7 days to start watching. Once you begin streaming a specific film, you’ll have 24 hours to finish watching.
Please note: most virtual programming is only available in the United States.
Let’s dive in and explore AFF2024 Virtual Programs together.
Psst: don’t forget to check the full Arab Film Festival site and to get your tickets or passes. Opening night is Thu October 24th!
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Narrative Feature Films
Back to Alexandria – United States Premiere!
After twenty years of absence, Sue returns to Egypt, her native country, to see her mother, Fairouz, an eccentric aristocrat with whom she has severed all ties. This surprising journey, taking her from Cairo to Alexandria, tinted with distant memories, nostalgia, and mixed feelings towards her past, will enable her to become free and emancipated. – Based on his childhood memories, the director tells us about the relationships filled with tough love between his mother and his grandmother.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Saturday October 26th in San Francisco.
Baghdad Messi
Iraq’s Selection for the 97th Academy Awards
The talented Hamoudi is an 11-year-old boy with a passion for soccer and an ultimate dream to one day reach the level of his idol Lionel Messi. The day Hamoudi is caught in a horrific suicide attempt, he wakes up severely injured in a hospital. As his parents struggle to keep the family safe, Hamoudi is determined to fight for his shattered dream.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Friday October 25th in San Francisco.
Documentary Feature Films
Aida Returns
A sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, often absurd story of multiple journeys, Aida Returns documents the director’s journey of loss as her mother Aida struggled with Alzheimer’s disease finding solace in her repeated “returning” to the Yafa of her youth, the journey of losing a parent, and the ultimate return journey to Yafa where Aida would finally find rest.
After her mother’s passing, director Carol Mansour, met friends in Beirut willing to carry Aida back with them to Palestine. The film accompanies Carol as she engineers a way to return her mother aided by an unlikely set of friends and strangers coming together to facilitate what should have been a simple journey.
This journey is at the same time very private and yet universal. It is a tribute to the lost past of the director’s family, an attempt to restore part of both an individual and a collective memory, and a poetic nod and affirmation to all those exiled Palestinians forbidden from returning to their hometowns, even after death.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Saturday Nov. 2nd in Oakland
Better
Winner: Best Skateboard Feature Film at Paris Surf & Skateboard Film Festival – 2023
Between 2009 and 2011, I (director Kamal Ourahou) filmed and edited Nassim Lachhab’s very first skateboarding videos in Rabat, Morocco. In 2020, after having lived in France and Spain, Nassim became the first Moroccan and African professional skater in history. Ever since then, I kept wondering: What had it been like for Nassim to rise to the forefront of the international skate scene, all the while wrestling with the challenges of immigration? In what way did his groundbreaking trajectory resonate with the current state of Morocco’s skate scene?
Stream it online or watch it in person on Saturday Nov. 2nd in Oakland
Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano
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 face an overwhelming decision: to continue the production of their movie or abandon it? As they face the aftermath of the catastrophe, they are torn between their firm belief in the transformative power of cinema and a deep sense of cynicism about its ability to effect change in a nation plagued by economic turmoil and societal collapse. Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano chronicles their struggles and highlights the crew’s resilience as they strive to find meaning and purpose in their work amidst the devastation.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Friday Nov. 1st in Oakland
Tell Them About Us – North American Premiere!
Tell Them About Us follows the lives of seven teenage girls as they embark on a journey of adolescence in Eberswalde, a provincial city in East Germany, just 55 km from Berlin. As newcomers to the area, the girls find themselves navigating not only the typical challenges of teenage life—friendships, school, and self-discovery—but also the complexities of adapting to a new culture and environment. Thrown into a world that is both unfamiliar and often unwelcoming, the girls grapple with the nuances of their identities as immigrants and refugees. Their experiences of displacement, cultural adjustment, and the pressures of assimilation add layers of complexity to their coming-of-age narratives. Despite these challenges, they find solace and strength in their shared bond as they strive to carve out a place for themselves in their new home and community. Parallel to their daily lives, the director facilitates workshops where the girls explore their hopes, dreams, and fears through writing, music, and acting, afterwhich, they write scenes in order to stage in front of the camera. These scenes are turned into dream sequences where the girls envision themselves ahead, as a way to process painful experiences and playfully translate them into future perspectives.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Saturday Nov. 2nd in Oakland
We Never Left (w/Q&A) – World Premiere!
Filmmaker Loulwa Khoury will be joining us for a Q&A after the screening.
Portraying a heart-wrenching duality between life in Beirut and in New York, WE NEVER LEFT is a tortured love story of a displaced people – an impassioned testament to Lebanese expats’ unrequited yet irrepressible love for their homeland after the start of the Lebanese revolution.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Sunday October 27th in San Francisco.
Short Film Programs
Palestinian Voices
At the Arab Film and Media Institute, we seek to continually change the narrative, share our stories, and foster understanding of our common humanity through art and storytelling. At the end of last year, in response to beginning of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, we started a program called Palestinian Voices to do just this. Throughout this dire time, we feel that is it more important than ever to share the history, culture, and stories of Palestine.
In contrast to Western media coverage that often dominates the narrative, this program highlights the stories of Palestinians as they want to tell them. Each film offer us glimpses into the daily lives of the Palestinian people–their struggles under occupation, but also their hopes, dreams, and insistent reclamation of life, despite it all. We are honored to share these shorts that explore childhood imagination, the efforts to return, and the solidarity that can be found in surprising places.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Friday October 25th in San Francisco.
Dahik (Laughter)
Our comedy shorts program returns with a selection of sharp, witty, and imaginative films that serve as conduits for social commentary. This year’s characters must deal with increasingly absurd situations in pursuit of simple (and some not-so-simple) desires, whether they are trying to steal a kiss, manage a construction site, or bring a horse up to an apartment. However, their efforts are thwarted by the people around them, who are not so understanding of their endeavors…
Stream it online or watch it in person on Sunday November 3rd in Oakland
Queer Lens: The Ties That Bind
This year’s Queer Lens program highlights the importance of relationships and community building for young LGBTQ+ Arabs. Featuring a diverse set of award-winning shorts from the Levant, North Africa, and the diaspora, each of these films contend with what it means to find yourself through forming connections with others. The filmmakers explore how Queer Arab youth seek out one another across space and time: by connecting across countries, finding solace in older generations, or through exploring hidden queer narratives in Arab history. Despite the obstacles of social stigma, physical distance, and historical distortion, Queer Arabs remain steadfast in their efforts to establish a community of acceptance and understanding with and for each other.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Tuesday October 29th in San Francisco.
Youth Rebellion
These stories explore the big and small rebellions of young people navigating a sensitive time in their lives. From having a first kiss, to dealing with death, to fulfilling the expectations of gender roles, the characters in these shorts quickly learn what is deemed acceptable for them in no uncertain terms. In turn, their actions become rebellious as they refuse to fit into the lines drawn by friends, family, and society.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Sunday October 27th in San Francisco.
SPECIAL PROGRAMS
Halloween Selections
Halloween Event: Al-ta’weeza (The Curse)
Since this year’s Arab Film Festival will cross through Halloween, it feels only right to bring in a little spookiness into the program.
High school teacher Mahmoud and his family live in a small, rundown home. Mahmoud is under pressure to sell the house to an odd realtor who comes by one day, despite the state of the building. When he refuses the offer, strange and scary things begin to happen to his family. Furniture spontaneously combusts, they are attacked in their beds and an invisible presence settles in the home, trying to drive them out. The film stars a number of very accomplished Egyptian actors, the most famous of which is Yousra, whose work as an actress and singer has made her a glamorous icon of the region.
Stream it online or watch it in person on Thursday October 31st in San Francisco.
AFF 2023 Selections
This year we are also showing – online only – some of the films that were scheduled to screen at AFF2023. Don’t miss them!
Coming Around
At a hip Brooklyn bar, Eman tells friends about an upcoming play she’s starring in and that her mother is flying in from Columbia to see her perform. Eman says, “I told her there’s going to be a scene that might make you uncomfortable because my character kisses another character.” A friend remarks, “You couldn’t just say “you kiss a girl?” Eman exclaims, “Nope!” In her work as a sociologist, Eman studies themes that have emerged from her own life through situations like this: the intersections of her queer and religious identities, with a particular interest in second-generation immigrant Muslim Americans. She holds workshops for queer students and deconstructs the “coming out” narrative. She says, “You often have to come out to the same person over and over again.”
In Columbia, Eman’s mother, Fatten, is a psychiatrist and self-proclaimed “non-feminist.” Like Eman, she defies Western stereotypes of Muslim women. Fatten raised Eman and her sister Arwa as a single mother in Missouri. For Fatten, religion is her sole guiding principle in life. By contrast, Eman finds herself questioning faith as she moves through adulthood. At the same time, she recognizes that her relationship with her mother is one of the most important in her life.
Only available online (no in-person screenings)
Far From The Nile
- Winner Best Non-Fiction Film at the 44th Cairo International Film Festival
- Winner Silver Award Long Film at the 12th Luxor African Film Festival
- Winner Exceptional Merit at Doctors Without Borders International Film Festival
Filmmaker Sherief Elkatsha follows 12 African musicians from seven countries along the Nile River as they band together in an international coalition to highlight the water conflict along the river they share. As they leave their homes in Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Burundi, and Uganda and embark on a 100-day tour of America’s heartland, the film captures the challenges of collaboration across cultural lines. Despite their vast cultural differences, musical styles, and competing egos, the artists must find ways to create and remain united in their cause.
Only available online (no in-person screenings)
We Dare to Dream
We Dare to Dream is the story of refugee athletes from Iran, Syria, South Sudan and Cameroon who swim, run and fight their way to opportunity and safety in host nations across the world. Spanning a breadth of backgrounds, personal stories and Olympic sports, the film reveals their lives and hopes as they train to compete on the world stage, showing the fire and the drive of young people forced to leave their families, homes and countries of birth to build new lives out of nothing.
Directed by Academy Award® nominated Waad al-Kateab (For Sama), executive produced by Angelina Jolie, and produced by Academy Award® winner Joanna Natasegara (The White Helmets, Virunga, The Edge of Democracy) and Emmy-winning producer Abigail Anketell-Jones (The Edge of Democracy, The Nightcrawlers) of Violet Films, two time Academy Award®-nominated producer, Bryn Mooser (Body Team 12, Lifeboat) and Kathryn Everett of XTR Studios and Joe Gebbia of Studio Gebbia, We Dare to Dream is a tale of resilience and inspiration, hardship and loss, hope and home.
Culminating in their competition at the summer Olympics, their compatriots back home and their new communities in refugee camps watch as these determined young athletes fight for their place in the world. This is their story of heart in the face of adversity, and most of all, hope for a better life.
Only available online (no in-person screenings)
AFF 2023 – Short Films
This is a selection of short films originally programmed for the 27th Arab Film Festival in 2023. While they were originally meant to reside in separate programs with different themes, together as one program they still compliment each other well, exploring stories of diasporic Arab life across the United States and Canada. Each filmmaker’s individual approach to this topic and their unique styles each bring something different to the table.
Only available online (no in-person screenings)
AFMI Forums – New!
Introducing a new type of programming from AFMI: AFMI Forums. These events might be stand alone, as in the case of AFF2024’s Collective Lens: The What, Why, and How of FILM IMPACT, or might follow a screening – see Archiving Armenian Stories (in-person screening + discussion), and Retrospective: Slingshot Hip Hop (in-person screening w/ discussion).
Each discussion goes beyond filmmaking to deepen the conversation around some of the most important themes present in a specific film or issues affecting filmmakers and our communities.
Collective Lens: The What, Why, and How of FILM IMPACT
This special presentation will offer an overview of film impact, covering:
- What impact is
- Why we do the work of impact
- How we put together a strategy for an impact campaign
Collective Lens equips filmmakers with impact frameworks and practices to help them design and implement their own impact campaigns and integrate impact values into their overall filmmaking process.
Attendees will also receive access to the Collective Lens Digital Library, a collection of templates, tools, guides, and resources to accompany filmmakers on their impact plans.
Once registered, attendees will receive a link to join the talk in their confirmation email.
This talk will be live streamed on October 29th at 10am PDT/1pm EDT.
Talkbacks
Discussion with the Queer Lens Filmmakers
Filmmakers from this year’s Queer Lens program join us for a discussion moderated by Raed Rafei.
Talkback with Filmmaker Meryam Joobeur
AFMI’s Film Program Curator, Yasmina Tawil, sits down with Meryam Joobeur, writer and director of the film WHO DO I BELONG TO – screening Friday November 1st at the New Parkway Theater as part of AFF 2024.
Yasmina and Meryam discuss the genesis of the film, which is the expansion of Meryam 2019 Oscar-nominated short film BROTHERHOOD and the boys who inspired it, the beauty of the North Tunisian landscape and how its captured in the film, use of magical realism in the feature film and how she explores the concept of extremism.
Talkback with Filmmaker Tamer Ruggli
Writer and member of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, George Iskander, sits down with filmmaker Tamer Ruggli to discuss his debut feature film BACK TO ALEXANDRIA, screening as part of AFF 2024 on Saturday October 26th at the AMC Kabuki 8, as well as online.
The two discuss the inspiration for the story, the challenges of filming in Egypt, how Tamer melded the different acting styles of the cast and much more.
What are you waiting for? Plan your AFF2024 attendance today, whether in person, online, or both. We are looking forward to seeing you.
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