Nada El-Omari is a filmmaker and writer of Palestinian and Egyptian origin based in Montreal, Quebec. Her practice and research interests centre on the intergenerational transmissions of memories, displacement, and the stories of belonging and identity, which she explores through a poetic, hybrid lens. Focusing on process and fragments in text, sound, and image, Nada explores new ways to self-narrate and to speak hybridity and self.
Vacarme(s) Films is a documentary film-making collective with a political commitment to the fight against all forms of domination. The main ambition of the collective is to make these films serve as tools and supports fo reflection, debate and collective organization
Palestinian Sunbird Documentary Competition
The Palestinian filmmaker and screenwriter was born one of nine children and grew up in the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. She first worked for the Palestinian Ministry of Culture before being accepted into the Egyptian Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo. An emerging voice in Arabic documentary, her films focus on the evolving status of women and dissident artists in the Middle East. As I Want is her first feature-length documentary
Palestinian Sunbird Documentary Competition
Jaime Villarreal Izquierdo is a journalist and filmmaker born in Santiago de Chile. He went to film school at NYU and he currently serves as the CEO of Alto Andes Production Company, where they develop and execute creativ content for different media and platforms
Synopsis
Ben and Saoirse live with their father high up in a lighthouse on a small island. To protect them from the dangers of the sea, their grandmother takes them to live in the city. Ben then discovers that his younger sister is a selkie, a sea fairy whose song can free magical creatures from the spell cast on them by the Owl Witch. During their fantastic journey, Ben and Saoirse must cope with fear and danger, and fight the witch so as to help the fairies get back their power.
Animation, Adventure
Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Denmark
Synopsis
The Good Grief community in New Jersey focuses on a holistic approach to mourning, where children can give in to rage in ‘the volcano room’ or say goodbye to a dying teddy bear patient in ‘the hospital room’. Over the course of a year, we get close to Kimmy, Nicky, Peter, Nora, Nolan and Mikayla along with their constant companion: grief, as they attend their weekly group meetings at Good Grief, practice small rituals to remember their loved ones, and go about the daily work of living.
Denmark, 2020
English
89 minutes
16+
Katrine Philp is an award-winning director who graduated from The National Film School of Denmark in 2009. Her first film, Book of Miri, was awarded the President's Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and nominated at IDFA. In 2014 Katrine won the Audience Award at the American Documentary Film Festival for her debut feature length documentary Dance For Me. The film was also nominated for an Emmy Award in the category 'Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming' 2015.
Palestinian Premiere - In collaboration with Cairo International Film Festival
Synopsis
In a small village in the occupied Golan Heights, the life of a desperate unlicensed doctor, who is going through an existential crisis, takes another unlucky turn when he encounters a man wounded in the war in Syria. Overturning all community expectations in times of war and national crisis, he ventures forth to meet his newly found destiny.