19:00

A WORLD NOT OURS    2012
Directed by Mahdi Fleifel
93 minutes
Various languages, with English subtitles

I consider Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel a friend of mine. For several years he was living in Amsterdam and used to come to my cinemas, and we would also spend long afternoons together. So it feels like a good time to dig his most precious film up again. This piercing documentary had great reactions from around the world. Director Mahdi Fleifel takes his camera back to the place he was born, the Ein al-Hilwe Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. This film consists of what he found there while he visits friends and relatives, along with home movie footage  shot by his father back in the 80s. Not really trying to focus on politics, but more on personal stories, the theme of the film is about exile and loss of identity. The result is at times gut-wrenching... but also surprisingly upbeat.

Yes, we see poverty, but we also see the determination of people that live in impossible circumstances... not for only a few years, but from one generation after another. Everyone's movement in and out of the camps is regulated by the army and security forces, and most of them are not allowed to work professionally in any way. They live there in a limbo, a dispossessed population that is slowly dying off. A World Not Ours enters this situation open-eyed, and it becomes a tapestry of personal viewpoints, both humorous and tragic. This is an example of intimate ethnographic cinema at its best.

Winner of many "best documentary" and "grand jury" prizes internationally, including the Peace Film Award at the Berlin Film Festival.

21:00 

GAZA FIGHTS FOR FREEDOM  2019
Directed by Abby Martin
84 minutes
In English

Although this acclaimed documentary gives a brief history and contextualization of the situation in Gaza, it mostly allows everyday Palestinians to take the floor and talk for themselves about their lives, ambitions and dreams. The year this documentary was made was a crucial one - in 2019 Palestinian civilians gathered together without weapons, and marched to the border of Gaza as a non-violent protest. It was called the Great March of Return, and it instantly turned into a disaster. This documentary doesn't recount events of what happened from afar, but is a live recording filmed guerrilla-style on the ground while the situation unfolded. 

The one thing that is clear to me, right from the start, is that this conflict is not between Jews and Palestinians. There are many Jewish and Israeli peace movements that are speaking out against the collective punishment of Palestinians in all its forms, and hopefully we will also be able to watch a few short films from their point of view also.