Four Arab American organizations are partnering for the inaugural Arab Film Fest Collab (AFFC) later this year.
The Arab American National Museum (AANM), Arab Film and Media Institute (AFMI), ArteEast and Mizna collectively present the Arab Film Fest Collab December 3–13, 2020.
Recommended Videos
The AFFC will include North American and U.S. premieres of highly anticipated films by Arab and Southwest Asian + North African (SWANA) artists, including Najwa Najjar’s award-winning drama Between Heaven and Earth (2019) and Revolution from Afar (Bentley Brown, 2020), a documentary spotlighting Sudanese musicians and poets. Other featured films include In Vitro (2019) by Palestinian artist and filmmaker Larissa Sansour.
“The pandemic has brought so many challenges, but it has also jump-started a collaboration that is a long time coming, bringing together the resources and creative input of four leading Arab/SWANA arts organizations. In the spirit of experimentation and being open to new possibilities, we’re excited to bring extraordinary debut films right into the homes of film lovers across the country,” said Lana S. Barkawi, Executive + Artistic Director of Mizna.
With programs highlighting Afro-Arab and Black SWANA voices and narratives, AFFC aims to capture the diverse narratives and complexity of the Arab world. Genres include drama, science-fiction, comedy and documentary, in both short-form and feature lengths. Languages represented in the films include Arabic, French, Somali and English, and every non-English offering is subtitled in English.
AFFC also offers special programming, including talkbacks with renowned filmmakers and scholars, as well as screenings and panel discussions with emerging Arab filmmakers.
On December 11, AFFC will partner with the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University (NYU) to present Excavating Alternative Histories, a panel featuring filmmakers Naeem Mohaiemen, Adam Khalil, and Zack Khalil in conversation with the director of the Center for Media, Culture and History at NYU, Faye Ginsburg. This program will be presented in tandem with AFFC screenings of films by the Khalil brothers, program TBA.
To learn more about the Film Fest, sponsorship opportunities, and to sign up for updates, visit arabfilmfestcollab.org