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

This piercing documentary has been getting special screenings all around the world, with great reactions. 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 is comprised of what he found there while he visits friends and relatives, along with home movie footage that had been shot by his father back in the 80s. Not really trying to focus on the politics, but more on personal stories, the theme of the film that unfolds 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.

* The director will be at this screening in person to present this film and have a chat with us all.