by Ralph Lucas – Publisher
(September 25, 2024 – Toronto, ON) This article started out as a look ahead at October film festivals in Canada. Not all of them, but the ones we know about. I was going to mention at the beginning that the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) launches tonight at the TIFF Lightbox. This is their 17th year and tonight’s opening film is the award-winning The Teacher by Farah Nabulsi.
We haven’t paid much attention to this festival simply because in the ebb and flow of an always hectic film festival season, we haven’t been able to find a Canadian connection we could write about. That could be our fault, my fault, because we don’t know enough about Canadian-Palestinian filmmakers. This time we looked a little harder and were pleased to find this year’s TPFF has three young filmmakers in its Home Grown Shorts programme. All three shorts will screen tomorrow night and each is an original work by local Palestinian filmmakers. The films were developed, workshopped, filmed and produced through the 2024 TPFF Film Residency, in partnership with Trinity Square Video.
First up is Stitches from director Deena A. Alsaweer. In Arabic with English subtitles, this is how TPFF describes the 10-minute film: When news breaks out that wedding dresses are banned from entering Palestine, Kareem’s world is shaken up. His spunky niece, Hind, convinces him to go on a mission to disguise and smuggle the wedding dresses as conspicuous packing wrapping for shishas (hookah) into Palestine. Their plan takes a poignant turn when a news update reveals that the trade embargo was the start of another war, leaving Kareem to rebuild not just his shop but also his sense of joy and community. With a mix of humour, cultural nuance, and a touch of bittersweet reality, this short film explores the beautiful power of human connection and the resilience of the Palestinian spirit.
Deena A. Alsaweer began making her career about a decade ago and has won several best screenplay awards and has worked with a range of production companies on TV, digital projects, and films for broadcasters such as TVOKids, CBC, Unis TV, Hallmark, and Bell Fibe TV1.
De-Clutter runs 18 minutes and is in English. Set in present-day Nablus, amidst the confines of a home masking an ant nest within its walls, Aya, a depressed young woman, is faced with a life-changing scholarship offer to study abroad and caught between the enticement of her dreams and the weight of potentially abandoning her lonely mother. As the discussions about the persistent acts unfold, long-suppressed emotions start to surface. Through the lens of these seemingly insignificant creatures, Aya and Lamia find a channel to express their true feelings, ultimately leading to a deeper understanding of each other’s struggles and desires.
Director Rimah Jabr is a theatre director, playwright, screenwriter, and Ph.D. candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. She holds a master’s degree in theatre-making from RITCS in Brussels and has written and directed several plays produced in Belgium, Canada, and Palestine.
The final short in the Home Grown programme is titled The Poem We Sang from Palestinian-Jordanian-Canadian director Annie Sakkab. Running 20-minutes in Arabic with English subtitles. The Poem We Sang is an experimental documentary in colour and black and white that meditates on love and longing – the love of one’s family and the longing for one’s home, contemplated through overcoming the trauma of loss of family home and of forced migration, transforming lifelong regrets into a healing journey of creative catharsis and bearing witness. The film is based on a poem by Khalil Al-Sakakini, a Palestinian Orthodox Christian teacher, scholar, poet, and Arab nationalist.
Annie Sakkab is a Palestinian-Jordanian-Canadian filmmaker and photojournalist. Her first short documentary, Hollie’s Dress, had its World Premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in 2020.
We are pleased to learn of these filmmakers and will add all of them to our Northernstars™ database in the next few days. The 17th annual Toronto Palestine Film Festival, in theatre and online, runs until October 2. Click here for more information.
Ralph Lucas is a former broadcast executive and award-winning director in high-end corporate video production. The founder and publisher of Northernstars.ca, online since 1998, he began writing about film and reviewing movies while in radio in Montreal in the mid-1970s.
