Documentary “Muhi – Generally Temporary”

"For the past seven years Muhi, a brave and spirited Palestinian boy has been living in an Israeli hospital, unable to return to his home in Gaza. Caught between two worlds and two peoples, Muhi is raised in paradoxical circumstances that transcend identity, religion and the conflict that divides his world. His time at the …

Gaza Surf Club

Gaza Surf Club is a documentary film directed by Philip Gnadt and Mickey Yamine about surfers in Gaza. The film focuses mostly on three people: the main protagonist, Ibrahim, a 23-year-old man who wants to go to Hawaii to train and learn, Sabah, a 15-year-old girl who once loved to swim but has had to …

Native: Dispatches From an Israeli-Palestinian Life

Sayed Kashua's new book Native: Dispatches From an Israeli-Palestinian Life is a collection of reflections written between 2006 and the summer of 2014, when Kashua left Israel and moved to the US to teach at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Native was originally published in Hebrew as Ben Ha’aretz. As Adam Kirsch writes, this "title that contains an untranslatable pun. Literally, it …

Mohamed Ben Attia’s Hedi and the Berlinale

Inhebbek Hedi, directed by Tunisian director Mohamed Ben Attia,  with Belgium's Dardenne brothers as co-producers, is "the first Arab contender in two decades" in the official competition of the Berlinale, running from 11-21 February. Hedi tells the story of "a simple young man" who "does not expect much from the life that is traced for …

Palestine/Israel, Music and Photography at Aspen

Palestinian Violinist Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar speaks about his initiative Polyphony at a panel about the Middle East and Art at Aspen, alongside French photographer Frédéric Brenner who spoke about his project Diaspora and his book This Place (You can see a longer presentation on the book entitled Israel through 12 lenses). The third person on the panel was Dutch composer  Merlijn Twaalfhoven who spoke about his …

Sayed Kashua at Other Israel Film Festival

Following a screening of Season Four of his comedy show Arab Labour, Sayed Kashua talks about his reasons for leaving Israel, in a panel moderated by Lucy Aharish with Mira Awad, Menashe Noy and Sammy Smooha. Nashua gets into a  bit of a heated debate with Smooha as to whether things have improved or not for Arabs …

Days of Dust

The scene of the destruction of Dayr al-Bahr that Halim Barakat leaves us with at the end of his novel Six Days returns in The Return of The Bird to the Sea, translated as Days of Dust. The novel takes place during the six day war of 1967, over the course of which we follow …

Returning to Haifa

Ghassan Kanafani's novella, Returning to Haifa (1969), tells the story of Said and Safeyya, who fled their home in Haifa during the 1948 Nakba. In the chaos and violence of their escape,  their five-month old son Khaldun is left behind. Twenty years later when the Mandelbaum Gate is opened they return to Haifa,  "to see" as …