A FIDAI FILM
الفلم عمل فدائي
YEAR 2024
RUNTIME 78’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany; Qatar, Brasil; France
LANGUAGE Arabic, English, Hebrew
TECHS Color, Black and White
RUNTIME 78’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany; Qatar, Brasil; France
LANGUAGE Arabic, English, Hebrew
TECHS Color, Black and White
In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time, it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images. Taking this as a premise, 'A Fidai Film' aims to create a counter-narrative to this loss, presenting a form of cinematic sabotage that seeks to reclaim and restore the looted memories of Palestinian history. It’s a poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, told through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques.
AWARDS & MENTIONS
︎︎︎Cinematic Vision Award
Camden International Film Festival
︎︎︎Jury Prize in the Burning Lights Competition
Visions du Réel
︎︎︎GNCR/CINÉ+ Distribution Support Prize / Renaud Victor Prize
FID Marseille
︎︎︎Premio del Sindacato Nazionale Critici Cinematografici Italiani (SNCCI) / Menzione d’onore Giuria Giovani
Pesaro Film Festival
︎︎︎International Feature Award
DokuFest
︎︎︎Mirage Sound Design Award
MIRAGE Film Festival
︎︎︎Best International Film
Lima Alterna Festival Internacional de Cine
︎︎︎Young Jury Special Mention
Archivio Aperto
︎︎︎ Jury Special Mention
Transmutación Cine Contemporaneo
︎︎︎ Best Film
Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote
︎︎︎ Tanit d’Or
Carthage Film festival
︎︎︎ Grand Prize
Festival en Ville !
FESTIVALS
Visions du Réel
IndieLisboa
Pesaro Film Festival
FID Marseille
Kino Otok
Encounters South African International Documentary Festival
Festival Obskura
Golden Apricot Yerevan IFF
DokuFest
Sarajevo Film Festival
États généraux du film documentaire
Camden International Film Festival
EDOC Encuentros del Otro Cine Film Festival in Ecuador
Villa Medici Film Festival
Palestine Cinema Days
BIEFF Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival Toronto Palestine Film Festival
Pravo Ljudski Film Festival
DMZ International Documentary Film Festival Festival International du Film Indépendant de Bordeaux
BFI London Film Festival
MIRAGE Film Festival
Lima Alterna Festival Internacional de Cine
FICValdivia
Viennale - Vienna International Film Festival
SEMINCI - Valladolid International Film Week
Refocus Film Festival
Transmutación Cine Contemporaneo
Archivio Aperto
Ji.hlava IDFF
Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá - MIDBO
Janela Internacional de Cinema do Recife Verzió Film Festival
Indie Memphis
Sharjah Film Platform 7 (SFP7)
Écrans du réel
Festival Internacional de Cine de Cali
IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
London Palestine Film Festival Festival du film franco-arabe
Palestine Filmer C’est Exister
FIDOCS | El Cine de lo Real RIDM - Montreal International Documentary FestivalFestivalforumdoc.bh - Festival do Filme Documentário e Etnográfico de Belo Horizonte
Mar del Plata Internationa Film Festival
Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote
Marrakech International Film Festival
Human Rights Film Festival (HRFF) Zagreb Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival
14th Which Human Rights? Film Festival
Media City Film Festival
Carthage Film festival
Écrans du réel
Festival en ville!
Sanat Dünyamız Film Days
DocPoint Helsinki
Antenna Documentary Film Festival
Ismailia International Film Festival
La Inesperada – Festival de cine
InScience Film Festival
Luxembourg City Film Festival
Sofia International Film Festival
Courtisane festival
Chicago Palestine Film Festival
International Film Festival of Uruguay
Dokumentarfilmwoche Hamburg
Alchemy Film & Art
UnArchive Found Footage Fest
Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival
UNDR
YEAR 2024
RUNTIME 15’
COUNTRIES Palestine
TECHS Color, Black and White
RUNTIME 15’
COUNTRIES Palestine
TECHS Color, Black and White
Helicopter footage examines the desert, surveying ancient natural formations and human interventions. Dynamite changes the face of the land. Farmers work their fields. Children play hide-and-seek. Employing archival footage, UNDR constructs an eerie narrative of calculated incursion. We cannot help but recall that Palestine remains a land subjected to aerial surveillance that seeks to appropriate the landscape.
︎︎︎Nicholas Davies, IFFR
︎︎︎Nicholas Davies, IFFR
AWARDS
︎︎︎Best EXiS Award
(EXiS) Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul
︎︎︎Special Mention
BIEFF Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival
︎︎︎Best International Short Film
Lima Alterna Festival Internacional de Cine
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FESTIVALS
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IFFR - International Film Festival RotterdamBerwick Film & Media Arts FestivalU
Unarchive Found Footage Fest
Prismatic Ground
(EXiS) Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul
Karlovy Vary IFF
Dokufest
EDOC Encuentros del Otro Cine Film Festival in Ecuador Palestine Cinema Days
Peripheries of Film & Video Fest Festival
BIEFF Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival
BFI London Film Festival
Lima Alterna Festival Internacional de Cine Viennale - Vienna International Film Festival Transmutación Cine Contemporaneo Uppsala Short Film Festival ZINEBI – International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao
Kassel Dokfest Ajyal Film Fest - Doha Film Institute
Human Rights Film Festival (HRFF) InLaguna Film Festival
14th Which Human Rights? Film Festival
︎︎︎Best EXiS Award
(EXiS) Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul
︎︎︎Special Mention
BIEFF Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival
︎︎︎Best International Short Film
Lima Alterna Festival Internacional de Cine
FESTIVALS
IFFR - International Film Festival RotterdamBerwick Film & Media Arts FestivalU
Unarchive Found Footage Fest
Prismatic Ground
(EXiS) Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul
Karlovy Vary IFF
Dokufest
EDOC Encuentros del Otro Cine Film Festival in Ecuador Palestine Cinema Days
Peripheries of Film & Video Fest Festival
BIEFF Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival
BFI London Film Festival
Lima Alterna Festival Internacional de Cine Viennale - Vienna International Film Festival Transmutación Cine Contemporaneo Uppsala Short Film Festival ZINEBI – International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao
Kassel Dokfest Ajyal Film Fest - Doha Film Institute
Human Rights Film Festival (HRFF) InLaguna Film Festival
14th Which Human Rights? Film Festival
PARADISO, XXXI, 108
YEAR 2022
RUNTIME 18’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany
LANGUAGE Hebrew
TECHS Color
RUNTIME 18’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany
LANGUAGE Hebrew
TECHS Color
“Nothing can be heard anymore; the roar of our plane absorbs every other sound. We are heading straight to the world’s biggest display of soundproof fireworks, and soon we will drop our bombs”.
AWARDS
︎︎︎Bester Experimentalfilm
Preis der deutschen Filmkritik
FESTIVALS
Locarno Film Festival
Viennale - Vienna International Film Festival
IFFR - International Film Festival Rotterdam
Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival
Camden International Film Festival
Black Canvas – Festival De Cine Contemporaneo, Mexico City
Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival
FilmmakerFest Milan
Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival IFFA Independent Film Festival of Athens
Filmfest Dresden
Curtas Vila do Conde
Ajyal Film Fest - Doha Film Institute
Palestine Cinema Days
Laceno d'Oro - Naples
Las Palmas Short Film Festival
ALFILM Festival Berlin
Gabes Cinema Fen
Aflam - Marseille
Festival Internacional de cine independiente de Cosquin
International Human Rights Film Festival in Buenos Aires (FICDH)
Haifa Independent Film Festival
Toronto Palestine Film Festival
Guanajuato International Film Festival
Exis Experimental film Festival
Bucharest Short Film Festival
Lima Alterna IFF
Encounters Film Festival
Toronto Arab Fest
HIVE Film Days
Locarno Shorts Weeks
Tramway Film Festival - Cine Sin Fin
Pravo Ljudski Film Festival
AN UNUSUAL SUMMER
صيف غير عادي
YEAR 2020
RUNTIME 80’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany
LANGUAGE Arabic; English
TECHS Color, Black and White
RUNTIME 80’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany
LANGUAGE Arabic; English
TECHS Color, Black and White
Following an act of vandalism, the filmmaker’s father decides to install a surveillance camera to record the scenes unfolding in front of the house. Everyday family life, the neighbours going to work, and the children at school, An Unusual Summer captures fleeting moments of poetry whereas, in the background, the daily choreography of the Arab district—that no one some name the “ghetto”—of Ramla, in current Israeli territory, comes to the surface. Composing with this visual material of low-definition aesthetics, finely punctuated with sound effects, Kamal Aljafari creates a mechanical diary of a life that scrolls past the window and succeeds with patience and infinite grace in transfiguring a ‘film à dispositif’ based on a security device into a personal and eminently political fresco. “In the distant past, many years ago, in front of this house, there stood a fig tree in a garden, which has now vanished, bulldozed into memory, and swept up by History and Time.
︎︎︎Emilie Bujès, Visions du Réel, 2020
︎︎︎Emilie Bujès, Visions du Réel, 2020
AWARDS
︎︎︎Best film
Muestra de cine de Lanzarote Spain 2020
︎︎︎Best film beyond the canvas
Black Canvas Film Festival Mexico 2020
︎︎︎Jury prize
Filmmaker Festival Milan Italy 2020
︎︎︎More With Less Award
Images Festival Toronto 2021
FESTIVALS
Visions du Réel
International Film Festival Rotterdam
Viennale - Vienna International Film Festival
Seville European Film Festival
Filmmaker festival Milan
Lanzarote Muestra Internacional de Cine
Mostra de Cinema Arab i Mediterrani de Catalunya
Etats Généraux du film documentaire Lussas
Black Canvas Film Festival Mexico
Berlin Critics’ Week
Images Festival Toronto
Olhar de Cinema – Festival Internacional de Curitiba Brasil
Doc Buenos Aires Argentina
IT’S A LONG
WAY FROM AMPHIOXUSجميعنا اتينا من هناك
YEAR 2019
RUNTIME 16’
COUNTRIES Germany
LANGUAGE Arabic; English
TECHS Color
RUNTIME 16’
COUNTRIES Germany
LANGUAGE Arabic; English
TECHS Color
An old woman leans to the young man with the yellow book sitting next to her and asks, “What are they distributing here?” “Numbers”, he replies.
In Berlin’s waiting rooms, where metal and wooden seats are nailed to the ground, people arrive after emerging from the seas. Here they wait.
Kamal Aljafari’s new short film once again collapses time, questioning the meaning of life in a system in which humanity is reduced to a number and the value of one’s future is measured by applications within grey hallways. Step into this black hole, where bones and flesh have become numbers in a queuing system. This surreal film observes the origins of our being versus the future of how we are defined. What have we become from our point of origin until today’s chaos of bureaucratic mazes? It’s a long way from Amphioxus, we all came from there.
︎︎︎Forum Expanded, Berlinale, 2019
In Berlin’s waiting rooms, where metal and wooden seats are nailed to the ground, people arrive after emerging from the seas. Here they wait.
Kamal Aljafari’s new short film once again collapses time, questioning the meaning of life in a system in which humanity is reduced to a number and the value of one’s future is measured by applications within grey hallways. Step into this black hole, where bones and flesh have become numbers in a queuing system. This surreal film observes the origins of our being versus the future of how we are defined. What have we become from our point of origin until today’s chaos of bureaucratic mazes? It’s a long way from Amphioxus, we all came from there.
︎︎︎Forum Expanded, Berlinale, 2019
FESTIVALS
Berlinale 2019, Berlin
RECOLLECTION
استعادة
YEAR 2015
RUNTIME 70’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany; Lebanon
LANGUAGE Arabic; English
TECHS Color, Black and White
RUNTIME 70’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany; Lebanon
LANGUAGE Arabic; English
TECHS Color, Black and White
The Israeli and American features shot in the town of Jaffa from the 60s to the 90s are the basis for the history of a dream. All protagonists are removed from the original footage, leaving an empty setting formed by the town. Thus, the impossible is made possible from the “I” perspective, namely filming the past and compiling a picture album made of memories.
︎︎︎Locarno Film Festival, 2015
︎︎︎Locarno Film Festival, 2015
FESTIVALS
Locarno Film Festival
DOC Buenos Aires, Argentina
Torino Film Festival, Italy
Institute Lumiere Lyon, France
États généraux du film documentaire Lussas
Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival
3rd Bienal de la Imagen en Movimento, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Kunstverein München, Germany
PORT OF MEMORY
ميناء الذاكرة
ميناء الذاكرة
YEAR 2009
RUNTIME 62’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany; France
LANGUAGE Arabic; Hebrew
TECHS Color, 35mm
RUNTIME 62’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany; France
LANGUAGE Arabic; Hebrew
TECHS Color, 35mm
Walled-up houses, notice of expulsion, immobile consumers in a café, an eccentric individual driving round on his scooter shouting, a sick old woman and her daughter glued to a television set, stray cats, the anxiety of a couple tetanised by the sombre certainties of the future, and to finish, a cemetery overlooking the sea and night drawing in on the terraces. The picture that Kamal Aljafari paints for us of Jaffa the Palestinian is that of a shrinking skin slowly closing in on its resigned inhabitants, who are crushed by fate, whatever they say about it, as if the slow-motion repetition of everyday gestures were their only way of suspending the course of time, of delaying the inevitable.
︎︎︎Javier Packer y Comyn, Cinéma du Réel 2010
︎︎︎Javier Packer y Comyn, Cinéma du Réel 2010
AWARDS
︎︎︎Louis Marcorelles Award
Center Pompidou, Cinéma du Réel Paris
FESTIVALS
Cinema du réel, Paris
Torino Film Festival, Italy
International Film Festival Rotterdam
San Fransisco Film Festival
Filmmaker’s Society, Vancouver
Migrating Forms, Anthology Film Archives, NYC
DOC Buenos Aires
San Sebastian International Film Festival
Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema, 1960s-Now, MoMA New York
BALCONIES
الشرفات
YEAR 2007
RUNTIME 7’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Lebanon
TECHS Color
RUNTIME 7’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Lebanon
TECHS Color
An experimental meditation focusing on the deteriorated and unfinished balconies of the home town of Kamal Aljafari, Ramla, and inspired by Romance sonámbulo by Federico García Lorca: "But now I am no longer me, and my house is no longer my House…"
︎︎︎HOMEWORKS IV | Sfeir-Semler – Art Gallery, 2008
︎︎︎HOMEWORKS IV | Sfeir-Semler – Art Gallery, 2008
THE ROOF
السطح
YEAR 2006
RUNTIME 61’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany
LANGUAGE Arabic; Hebrew; English
TECHS Color
RUNTIME 61’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany
LANGUAGE Arabic; Hebrew; English
TECHS Color
This deceptively quiet film presents a portrait of Aljafari’s family in Ramleh and Jaffa that hovers between documentary and cinematic memoir, guided by a nimble camera moving calmly but ceaselessly around the rooms of homes inhabited, damaged and ruined.
The title refers to the roof missing from the house where Aljafari’s family resettled in 1948, a home unfinished, an incomplete construction project. The use of stillness and off-screen space creates a sense of suspension, of time spent waiting, of aftermath, of lives lived elsewhere.
Aljafari’s striking use of his “cast,” his family, reveals the influence of Bresson’s use of nonprofessional actors as models whose performances emanate from their presence, not from acting.
The title refers to the roof missing from the house where Aljafari’s family resettled in 1948, a home unfinished, an incomplete construction project. The use of stillness and off-screen space creates a sense of suspension, of time spent waiting, of aftermath, of lives lived elsewhere.
Aljafari’s striking use of his “cast,” his family, reveals the influence of Bresson’s use of nonprofessional actors as models whose performances emanate from their presence, not from acting.
AWARDS
︎︎︎Best Soundtrack
FID Marseille, France
︎︎︎Best International Film
Images Festival, Toronto
︎︎︎Special Mention
Filmer à tout prix, Brussels, Belgium
︎︎︎Special Mention
Cinéma Méditerranéen Montpellier, France
FESTIVAL
FIDMarseille — Marseille International Film Festival
Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California
The Images Festival of Film & Video Toronto
Breda Photography Festival
Stedelijk Museum, Bureau Amsterdam, Holland
CinemaEast Film Festival, New York
Arab Film Festival, San Francisco
Musée Jeu de Paume, Paris,
Visions du Réel Festival, Nyon, Switzerland
Rotterdam International Film Festival
L’Alternativa de Barcelona
Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival
Cinémathèque de Nice
Filmer à tout prix, Brussels
Cinéma Méditerranéen Montpellier
DOC Buenos Aires
Le P’tit Ciné, Brussels
VISIT IRAQ
زورو العراق
YEAR 2003
RUNTIME 26’
COUNTRIES Germany; Switzerland
LANGUAGE Arabic; French; English
TECHS Color
RUNTIME 26’
COUNTRIES Germany; Switzerland
LANGUAGE Arabic; French; English
TECHS Color
Visit Iraq is a short about the abandoned Iraqi Airways office in Geneve, it was made during Kamal Aljafari studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
AWARDS
︎︎︎Best german short film
Ministry of Culture, Germany
︎︎︎Jury Prize
Artimage Biennial Graz, Austria