Witness
Palestine
🎞️
Witness Palestine 🎞️
Ten years ago, prolific Lebanese documentary filmmaker Jocelyne Saab emailed director Mohanad Yaqubi suggesting a collaboration. He never responded. Jocelyne passed away, and her films were finally archived. In this documentary letter, Mohanad writes back. Via her images and his words, he poses pressing questions, filmmaker to filmmaker, as he confronts the haunting repetition between her images and those emerging today from Palestine and Lebanon.
Join us for a film event unlike any any other, in celebration of Palestine's history and culture. In the historic Dryden Theatre, witness archival images of Palestine from the Eastman Museum's moving image collections, alongside a live accompaniment performed by musicians from the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and Toronto Symphony. Following by a Q&A with Kareem Roustom, Emmy-nominated composer of Palestinian Songs and Dances.
An archival journey through the life and mind of the brilliant Palestinian-American professor, author, and public intellectual Edward Said (1935–2003). Born in Jerusalem, Said was displaced, along with his refugee family, in 1948, with the founding of Israel. Sent to boarding school in Massachusetts, he would go on to become a Professor of Literature at Columbia University, later finding his calling as a world-renowned advocate for the Palestinian cause, and in essential books like Orientalism.
Join artist Ebby El‑Sharwaky for a hands-on tatreez workshop 🧵, the traditional Palestinian art of embroidery.
Learn how to stitch traditional Palestinian Tatreez on something you already own! You bring the item and we provide all the supplies and instructions!
In October 1985, Santa Ana, California was shaken by a brazen act of political violence when Palestinian American Alex Odeh, a beloved teacher and community leader, was killed by a tripwire bomb planted in his office. Despite substantial evidence and identified suspects, the case was never solved. Who Killed Alex Odeh? reopens the mystery, tracking a renewed investigation in real time as new leads emerge, long-buried records come to light, and the forces behind a political assassination are finally confronted.
Conceived and realized in Gaza during the genocide, Palestinian director Hosam Abu Dan makes his narrative feature debut with a nuanced and deeply human portrait of a father and his teenage daughter navigating everyday life in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
During the Syrian civil war, the district of Yarmouk, home to thousands of Palestinians, became the scene of dramatic and ferocious fighting. Little Palestine (Diary of a Siege) is a film that follows the destiny of civilians during the brutal sieges, imposed by the Syrian regime, that took place in the wake of the battles. With his camera, Abdallah Al-Khatib composes a love song to a place that proudly resists the atrocities of war.
During the siege of their city, a group of ordinary people struggle to survive amid hunger, snipers, and bombardments, while clinging to human connection, love, and small daily pleasures. Faced with impossible moral choices and deep psychological strain, their lives become inseparable from the siege itself.
Join Writers & Books and Witness Palestine Film Festival for a pair of short film screenings at University of Rochester in support of our Rochester Reads 25th Anniversary selection, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.
Join us in celebrating the opening of the 15th edition of the Witness Palestine Film Festival, with an evening of home-cooked Palestinian cuisine. This year we are honored to welcome Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mosab Abu Toha, who will provide the keynote address at our opening dinner.
Ten years ago, prolific Lebanese documentary filmmaker Jocelyne Saab emailed director Mohanad Yaqubi suggesting a collaboration. He never responded. Jocelyne passed away, and her films were finally archived. In this documentary letter, Mohanad writes back. Via her images and his words, he poses pressing questions, filmmaker to filmmaker, as he confronts the haunting repetition between her images and those emerging today from Palestine and Lebanon.
Join us for a film event unlike any any other, in celebration of Palestine's history and culture. In the historic Dryden Theatre, witness archival images of Palestine from the Eastman Museum's moving image collections, alongside a live accompaniment performed by musicians from the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and Toronto Symphony. Following by a Q&A with Kareem Roustom, Emmy-nominated composer of Palestinian Songs and Dances.
An archival journey through the life and mind of the brilliant Palestinian-American professor, author, and public intellectual Edward Said (1935–2003). Born in Jerusalem, Said was displaced, along with his refugee family, in 1948, with the founding of Israel. Sent to boarding school in Massachusetts, he would go on to become a Professor of Literature at Columbia University, later finding his calling as a world-renowned advocate for the Palestinian cause, and in essential books like Orientalism.
Join artist Ebby El‑Sharwaky for a hands-on tatreez workshop 🧵, the traditional Palestinian art of embroidery.
Learn how to stitch traditional Palestinian Tatreez on something you already own! You bring the item and we provide all the supplies and instructions!
Coyotoes (2025), I’m Glad You’re Dead now (2025), and Last Shot (2026)
A visceral Road Movie that chronicles the daily travails of Palestinians of all backgrounds as they seek routes through, under, around, and over a bewildering matrix of barriers. With intimate proximity, director Khaled Jarrar captures the methods and motivations of those who dare to cross the wall, in defiance of apartheid and dispossession.
United by a shared oath to save lives, three American doctors—Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian—work in a besieged hospital in Gaza and return to the United States to fight for the patients and colleagues they left behind.
Palestinian projectionist Hussein Darbi embarks on a journey through the West Bank, seeking parts to restore an old movie theater’s projector, clinging to hopes of reclaiming his former position. Darbi brings more than 40 years of experience and connections into getting a carbon-arc projector going again, when a German NGO arrives with European funds to renovate it. A cautionary tale about cultural colonialism that serves as an allegory for much more than merely cinema.
In October 1985, Santa Ana, California was shaken by a brazen act of political violence when Palestinian American Alex Odeh, a beloved teacher and community leader, was killed by a tripwire bomb planted in his office. Despite substantial evidence and identified suspects, the case was never solved. Who Killed Alex Odeh? reopens the mystery, tracking a renewed investigation in real time as new leads emerge, long-buried records come to light, and the forces behind a political assassination are finally confronted.
Conceived and realized in Gaza during the genocide, Palestinian director Hosam Abu Dan makes his narrative feature debut with a nuanced and deeply human portrait of a father and his teenage daughter navigating everyday life in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
During the Syrian civil war, the district of Yarmouk, home to thousands of Palestinians, became the scene of dramatic and ferocious fighting. Little Palestine (Diary of a Siege) is a film that follows the destiny of civilians during the brutal sieges, imposed by the Syrian regime, that took place in the wake of the battles. With his camera, Abdallah Al-Khatib composes a love song to a place that proudly resists the atrocities of war.
During the siege of their city, a group of ordinary people struggle to survive amid hunger, snipers, and bombardments, while clinging to human connection, love, and small daily pleasures. Faced with impossible moral choices and deep psychological strain, their lives become inseparable from the siege itself.