In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother’s bold choices, her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives.
Born in Brooklyn to Palestinian refugee parents, Soraya (Suheir Hammad) decides to journey to the country of her ancestry when she discovers that her grandfather's savings have been frozen in a Jaffa bank account since his 1948 exile. However, she soon finds that her simple plan is a complicated undertaking — one that takes her further from her comfort zone than she'd imagined.
On his wedding anniversary, Yusef and his young daughter set out in the West Bank to buy his wife a gift. Between soldiers, segregated roads and checkpoints, how easy would it be to go shopping?
After years abroad in Italy, Shadi returns to his native Nazareth. But this is no spectacular homecoming. He's back somewhat begrudgingly to honour his "wajib" (or duty) to hand out invitations to his sister's wedding with his father. The simmering tension between the two — who are often stuck in a car, more often than not in traffic — builds, exposing the sometimes-comic chasms that exist between men who live in different worlds but share an unshakable bond.
Iman, a young newly wed Palestinian bride, is arrested and incarcerated in a top-security Israeli prison where she gives birth to a baby boy. As she struggles to survive and raise her child behind bars, she is torn between her instinct as a mother and the difficult decisions she must make, finding through her relationship with the other prisoners - both Palestinian and Israeli – the time and space to reflect, develop and mature as a young woman.
A Palestinian schoolteacher struggles to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance with the chance of a new relationship with a volunteer-worker and his emotional support for one of his students.
Over four centuries ago, William Shakespeare collaborated with others on a play about the historical figure Sir Thomas More. In it, he wrote a speech in which More passionately articulates a defence of refugees, culminating in a poignant reference to their plight. Fast-forward to the present: Aleppo, in the midst of the Syrian civil war. Amira, a paediatric surgeon, performs a life-saving operation during the darkest days of the conflict. Through an unexpected twist of fate, she and her daughter become central characters in a dangerous tale that intricately interweaves the lives of five families spanning four continents and redefines all of their existences. Versions of this story continue to repeat themselves over the centuries. For this reason, Shakespeare aptly named this plight “The Strangers’ Case”.
Tarek and his mother Ghaydaa number among the tens of thousands of refugees crossing the border from Palestine, having been separated from Tarek's father amidst the chaos of the Six Day War. They ultimately settle at the Harir refugee camp, a makeshift home for a new generation displaced by conflict. Tarek dreams of being reunited with his father, and struggles to adapt to a new life far away from all he previously knew.
Despite being part of a young generation of Palestinian Arabs whose families chose to stay and challenge the Israeli state after Al-Nakba, 17-year-old Tamer and his friends are just like any other group of teenage boys. They clumsily search for drugs, flirt with girls, play video games, and slack off at school. However, when a beautiful new student named Maysaa’ joins their class Tamer immediately falls for her and, by association, is drawn into her political activism. Together they join fellow classmate, Safwat, in an operation to covertly raise the Palestinian flag and peacefully disrupt the local celebrations planned for Israel’s Independence Day – otherwise known to Palestinians as a day of mourning and memorialization for their displacement 70 years prior. Unsure of his own political convictions, Tamer must quickly determine what matters to him and what price he is willing to pay for freedom.
Occupied Palestine: A serene landscape now pockmarked by military checkpoints. When a Palestinian film crew decides to avert a closed checkpoint by taking a remote side road, the political landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of military occupation.
In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, Nafisa — a fifteen-year-old girl from Sudan — learns about life and love under the watchful eye of her grandmother, the powerful village matriarch Al-Sit. When a young businessman from abroad arrives and threatens to disrupt their way of life with a new development plan, Nafisa finds herself at the center of a power struggle to determine the village’s future. As she discovers her own strength, Nafisa must balance modernity and tradition in her defiant pursuit of personal freedom. She and her community will never be the same again.
