Did you join us in San Francisco and the Bay Area for the 2025 Arab Film Festival? Whether you were near or far, here are the 9 best moments from AFF2025. Enjoy!
A Unique Opening Night
Opening Night is always special and this year we did something we had never tried before: we screened our opening night film, Palestine 36, back to back twice at the AMC Kabuki 8 in San Francisco. Film festival fans chose whether to join us for an earlier or later screening, and the whole evening was a big success!
Annmarie Jacir recorded a special message for AFF2025’s opening night.
We had some wonderful special guests who joined us for Opening Night: Dina Shihabi, Nicholas Monsour, and Adam Habib joined to celebrate the beginning of 10 days of Arab Cinema. They are all members of the AFF2025 jury.
This year’s Jury Chair is Jim Sheridan, the acclaimed Irish director of In the Name of the Father and My Left Foot fame. While Jim couldn’t join us in person, he stayed connected throughout the festival and greatly enjoyed watching all the movies.
Palestinian Films Take Center Stage
This year we are proud to have brought you the most important movies of the year from and about Palestine. From Palestine 36, our opening night film and the winner of this year’s Arab Film Festival Audience Award, to All That’s Left of You, winner of AFF2025’s Best Narrative Feature Award, and Kaouther Ben Hania’s powerful The Voice of Hind Rajab, all three movies had sold out screenings at our festival – in some cases multiple times.
After the screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab, Erik Anderson from Awards Watch joined our panel, and reiterated the importance of such movies and how they are changing the landscape in Hollywood and helping people raise their voices.
We also partnered up with SFFILM and DocStories to bring Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk to the Bay Area. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk‘s intimate, first-hand perspective of life under siege in Gaza, captured through video calls between director Sepideh Farsi and 25- year-old Palestinian photojournalist and poet Fatma Hassona, won AFF2025’s Best Documentary Feature Award.
Last, but not least, we hosted a sold-out special short film program, Borderless, which featured work by filmmakers from the West Bank, Gaza and Occupied Palestine. More about this later in this post.
Five Oscar Films
The 29th Arab Film Festival featured 5 official submissions to the Oscars + one more film that has very good chances of being shortlisted for the Oscars. They are:
- Palestine 36 (Palestine)
- All That’s Left of You (Jordan)
- The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisia)
- Happy Birthday (Egypt)
- Calle Malaga (Morocco)
Matthew Carey wrote in Deadline that Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is “One of the year’s top Oscar contenders,” and he is not the only one recognizing this powerful and moving film. We certainly hope to see it nominated for the 2026 Best Documentary Oscar.
AFMI’s First Filmmaker’s Connect
AFF2025 saw the debut of a new event, a gathering to highlight the importance of projects that are still in the works. This year’s Filmmaker’s Connect focused on the upcoming Edward Said documentary.
Untitled Edward Said Film is a sweeping archival documentary told in Edward’s voice that traces the evolution of his political awakening, his personal struggles, and his reckoning with a life of exile. Once completed, the film will cover seven decades, from his childhood in Jerusalem to his death in New York City in 2003, two years after the 9/11 attacks. Untitled Edward Said Film is the first documentary to be granted full access by the Said Family and estate and features never-before-seen material from the family archive and the Said archive at Columbia University.
The Filmmaker’s Connect event began with a 20-minute screening of the documentary, which is still in the works, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Annie Chabel, The Intercept’s inaugural Chief Executive Officer.
The panel discussion featured guest speakers Maiken Baird , Najla Said, and Wadie Said on the importance of documentation of thinkers such as Edward Said, and why we need to highlight such a voice that is so essential to the Middle East and the Palestinian plight.
The Hottest Film in Lebanon
BornStars, directed by Caroline Labaki, chose the Arab Film Festival to make its US Premiere and it has now reached the #1 spot in Lebanon!
The screening was a blast, and producer Chady Elie Mattar joined us for a Q&A.
BornStars tells the story of JD, a Lebanese-American university senior who has ten days to find $7K or drop out. With his misfit crew, he hatches Lebanon’s most outrageous scheme: launching the country’s first porn website. Inspired by such films as Ferris Bueller, Superbad, and Risky Business, BornStars is a rebellious, coming-of-age comedy that challenges taboos and celebrates youth daring to challenge social norms.
Inspiring and Being Inspired by New Generations
The 2025 Arab Film Festival showcased works from AFMI’s Creators, our collection of programs to support talent, including fiscal sponsorship for filmmakers, workshops and trainings, mentorship and our filmmaking program for teens – Takalam: Arab Youth Speak Up!
Takalam: Arab Youth Speak Up! is AFMI’s summer program for Arab-American youth aged 13 to 18, in partnership with the Oakland Unified School District’s APISA Program and KDOL Youth Beat. During the festival we screened three films produced in the 2025 edition of the Takalam, featuring young filmmakers Ahlam Daghsan, Anwar Daghsan, Radwon Muthanna, Nada Mohsen, Malak Mohsin, and Lozah Alarqaban.
And we also screened Dearborn, the first completed projected to be fiscally sponsored through AFMI Creators! Dearborn is a half hour sci-fi dramedy pilot starring Inji El Gammal (as seen on Ramy) and Alia Abedand.
Leila Bustami (Dearborn) at the 29th Arab Film Festival
Dearborn tells the story of Haifa, a young rebellious woman who, expelled from college, returns to her close-knit Arab community in Dearborn, Michigan, determined to restore her reputation and regain her mother’s trust. However, her plans spiral when she becomes entangled in an alien conspiracy initiated by a quirky neighbor.
The best part? Dearborn Creator Leila Bustami joined us in person and answered questions from the younger Takalam filmmakers, inspiring them by showing what could be possible in just a few years.
A Timeless Gift
This year we partnered with the Criterion Collection the Roxie Theater to bring to the big screen Cairo Station in a rare 4K restoration by Janus Films/The Criterion Collection. And that’s not all! Everyone who came to the screening received a Blue Ray Special Edition Disc of Youssef Chahine’s 1958 masterpiece, courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
It was incredibly poignant to watch this timeless classic in a sold-out theater in 2025. Cairo Station is the only Arab Film currently in The Criterion Collection’s Master Collection and we continue to champion old as well as new Arab cinema masterpieces.
Celebrating Animation at Pixar
We were hosted at Pixar Studios to introduce our new Best Animation Short category.
We showed 6 shorts to the Pixar Jury and My Brother My Brother by brothers Abdelrahman and Saad Dnewarwon won Best Animated Short Film.
“I started writing this film together with my own twin brother Saad. Having grown up in a household where religious belief and scientific practice coexisted, we were always puzzled by contradictory ontologies and left longing for answers.
As twins, we experienced the world in a different way than others. From the first instance, we perceived life as something shared by two. We didn’t only share the resources in our mother’s womb, but we also shared one face and therefore the accountability for each other’s actions. Being a twin you always have an instinctive fear of being one; of being without the other.
We initially started writing this film after the loss of our mother, and our urge to process what led to that moment. Now the story continues to be about loss. This time a different kind of loss, the loss of my twin brother Saad, my other half, and co-creator of this film, at the young age of 29. This makes this film very important for me, if not the most important project I worked on. It is Saad’s remaining legacy. Determined to continue this journey for both of us, I want to preserve his memory and the intimate moments I shared with him in this film.” – Abdelrahman Dnewar
Borderless
Another special moment was the sold-out evening dedicated to shorts by filmmakers from the West Bank, Gaza and Occupied Palestine.
Dina Amin curated “a powerful selection of documentary, experimental, and fiction films, foregrounding voices rooted in lived experience. Each work offered a unique lens on identity, resilience, and resistance, revealing the textures of everyday life and the complexity of being Palestinian today.”
As she wrote about the program, “Too often, Palestinians are seen only through narrow, distorted frames. This shorts program challenges these misconceptions by presenting authentic stories from within Palestine itself. … Filmmakers from the West Bank, Gaza and Occupied Palestine come together as a unified voice and embody what it means to be borderless: connected through shared memory, imagination, and creative resistance that cannot be confined by geography or separation.
You can also watch this video of Dina asking the filmmakers questions about their lives and work on AFMI’s YouTube channel.
Last, but not least, just a note to highlight that the 29th Arab Film Festival featured 61 films from 28 countries, including 29 films directed by women.
See you next year at the 30th 😵Arab Film Festival!
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