As Mizna marks our 25th organizational anniversary, the 18th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival returns September 25-29, 2024 at the Main Cinema in Minneapolis with a closing day of special films, programs, and a reception at the Walker Art Center. Anchored by stories from Palestine and Sudan, the 2024 festival brings programming that responds to the catastrophic state faced by much of the SWANA region.

Schedule of Events:

September 25, 2024

6:30pm - 7:30pm: TCAFF 2024 Opening Night Reception

Opening Night Reception in the Main Cinema lobby. Join us for light refreshments and music, right before the film!

7:30pm: Opening Night Film - Bye Bye Tiberias. A heartfelt documentary by Lina Soualem, where she and her mother, actor Hiam Abbas, piece together the stories of the women in their family by returning to Abbas's home village in Palestine, Tiberias.

September 26, 2024

12:00pm: Filmmaking on Our Own Terms

Mizna's Twin Cities Arab Film Festival is a place to see contemporary films from the SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) region, films that are relevant to our communities in the Twin Cities and around the world. This year, we also aim to create a space for BIPOC and SWANA filmmakers by offering a workshop to discuss best practices, common questions, and works-in-progress. Living in diaspora can make it difficult to find filmmakers with similar questions and to receive feedback from folks within the community; many of us often rely on non-SWANA and non-BIPOC spaces for dialogue and critique. Mizna invites filmmaker and educator Fatima Wardy to create such spaces for SWANA and BIPOC filmmakers. During the 2024 Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, selected filmmakers will come together for a two-day symposium that addresses the various challenges that filmmakers face. Participants will present finished, incomplete, partial, or potential projects to one another to receive feedback and advice on how to take the project to the next level.

Venue: FilmNorth, 550 Vandalia Street, Suite 120, Saint Paul, MN

4:00pm: Revolutionary Tales from Sudan

Revolutionary Tales is a short film segment guest-curated by Sudanese filmmaker Rafa Renas. This series of films depicts various perspectives and revolutionary currents in Sudan's recent history.

Rafa Renas is a Sudanese producer and filmmaker. Based in Khartoum, she produces cross-media campaigns, promoting a civil society, integration, and gender issues. She also produces for international media outlets. She was a co-curator of Aflam Sudan in Kenya, and she is a guest curator for the segment Revolutionary Tales at this year's Twin Cities Arab Film Festival.

6:00pm: Cinema Issue Launch

Mizna's special Cinema Issue is a box of printed treasures that explore a theme of fragmentation-a 50s Egyptian movie poster, letterpress-printed film tickets, a zine you must fold in order to read, and much more! During the film festival, Mizna will present a program of readings and films that feature in the issue as well as a discussion about conceiving, designing, and editing while resisting the genocide with guest-editor Saeed Taji Farouky, London-based Palestinian filmmaker, educator, and curator; Alex DeArmond, graphic designer; George Abraham, executive editor; and Lana Barkawi, publisher.

Venue: The Main Cinema, 115 SE Main St, Minneapolis, MN

7:00pm: Outdoor Gathering (7pm) + Tajouje (8pm)

Gathering Under The Bridge: Join us beginning at 7:00pm under the Third Avenue Bridge, outside of the Main Cinema. Festival sponsors Baba's Hummus will have a food truck and Batroun Wines will serve Lebanese wine for a suggested donation + DJ Jacques will be spinning records!

Outdoor Film: At 8:00pm, Catch the classic 1977 Sudanese film Tajouje outdoors under the Third Avenue Bridge, a screening curated by guest programmer Fatima Wardy. Free to attend, suggested donation of $10. Audiences are encouraged to bring their own chairs! This screening is presented with the support of Trylon Cinema and Soft Cult Studio.

Tajouje

Curated by one of our guest programmers- filmmaker, curator, and educator Fatima Wardy-this Sudanese classic from the 1970s has it all: romance, melodrama, tragedy, comedy, poetry, song, and dance. Considered one of the first narrative feature films from Sudan, Tajouje is an adaptation of a novel by the same name, which tells the tale of forbidden love and examines the social dynamics of a small village in the region during the 19th century. The film captures a striking moment in Sudanese history, and this digitized print makes it available in the present. Upon its release, the film screened in Cairo, Moscow, Berlin, Carthage, and Cannes. It can be viewed today due to the efforts of Sara Gubara, filmmaker Gadalla Gubara's daughter and collaborator, as well as the Arsenal Film Institute in Berlin.

Venue: Under Third Ave Bridge, 96 SE Main St,  MN

September 27, 2024

12:00pm: Filmmaking on Our Own Terms

Mizna's Twin Cities Arab Film Festival is a place to see contemporary films from the SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) region, films that are relevant to our communities in the Twin Cities and around the world. This year, we also aim to create a space for BIPOC and SWANA filmmakers by offering a workshop to discuss best practices, common questions, and works-in-progress. Living in diaspora can make it difficult to find filmmakers with similar questions and to receive feedback from folks within the community; many of us often rely on non-SWANA and non-BIPOC spaces for dialogue and critique. Mizna invites filmmaker and educator Fatima Wardy to create such spaces for SWANA and BIPOC filmmakers. During the 2024 Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, selected filmmakers will come together for a two-day symposium that addresses the various challenges that filmmakers face. Participants will present finished, incomplete, partial, or potential projects to one another to receive feedback and advice on how to take the project to the next level.  

Venue: FilmNorth, 550 Vandalia Street, Suite 120, Saint Paul, MN

5:00pm: Life Is Beautiful

In 2014, while a young Palestinian director Mohamed Jabaly was visiting a film festival in Tromsø, Norway, Israel launched a war on Gaza and the borders to his home were closed. It will be seven years before he can return home and see his family again. While waiting for the situation to change, Jabaly and friends begin documenting the process of applying for asylum. Facing many challenges, Mohamed stays connected with family in Gaza. They provide solace, but when Gaza is attacked again, Mohamed is faced with an impossible choice: if he goes back to Gaza, he may never be able to leave again and continue his work as a filmmaker. Told by a director who uses his creativity to connect with the world and forge a way forward,

7:00pm: The Burdened

Aden, Yemen, 2019: Civil war has been raging for five long years. Isra'a and Ahmed are in a constant battle to provide for their five children-putting food on the table, dealing with daily power outages, and finding gasoline for their van makes life a minute-by-minute struggle. When they discover that Isra'a is pregnant, they scrape together their meager funds for an abortion. But money proves to be the least of their worries, and the state's bureaucratic labyrinth and the country's strict social mores drive the family to the brink.

9:15pm: Anxious in Beirut

In the ever-present desire to capture, record, and understand Beirut-and by extension himself- Zakaria Jaber has been trying to provide a coherent story for his city through film. Anxious in Beirut is a personal diary that documents the events of the last few years in Lebanon, capturing revolution, collapse conditions, explosions, and demonstrations. Living with constant anxiety, Zakaria, the film's young director, narrates his own life and the lives of those close to him as they navigate a worsening economic and political situation in Lebanon. Frustrated, he and his friends also consider leaving their country, a decision that each struggles to make.

The Diary of a Sky

The Diary of a Sky unfolds an atmospheric symphony of violence over Beirut, revealing the haunting fusion of incessant Israeli military flights and the hum of generators during blackouts. This 45-minute video essay plunges viewers into a chilling chronicle of daily life transformed by the weaponization of the air, where the terror of repeated incursions becomes a disconcertingly banal backdrop.

Venue: The Main Cinema, 115 SE Main St, Minneapolis, MN

September 28, 2024

12:00pm: Three Promises

Three Promises is the story of a mother and her camera, of a son and his suppressed memories, and of Palestine. In  the early 2000s, while the Israeli army retaliates against the Second Intifada in the West Bank, Suha films her daily family life, punctuated by frequent trips underground and overwhelmed by the anguish of her two young children. At every moment of intense danger, she promises God that she will leave if they survive. In 2017, her son discovers this archive of footage and reconnects with this suppressed past, wondering alongside his mother what drove her to record their suffering and why she delayed fleeing. While on the surface the film depicts a portrait of everyday life in times of war, on a deeper level, it presents the staggering beauty of a mother's love. Blending the voice of the present with impressive family footage, Yousef completes the story his mother began, thus averting the act of forgetting on a personal and collective level.

Pal/imp/sest

A choir of witnesses revisits a disrupted mourning session. The polyphonic narration in pal/imp/sest oscillates between absurd, profound, and found personal stories and footage, all reflecting on how grief rituals manifest. The film examines a series of ruptures, possessions, and dispossessions, regarding and presenting each as geopoetic witnessing of colliding and entangled histories, traumas, and bodies through unfolding violence on Onondaga land, as well as in Afghanistan and Gaza.

The Poem We Sang

An experimental documentary that meditates on love and longing-the love of one's family and the longing for one's home-The Poem We Sang contemplates overcoming the trauma of loss and forced migration by transforming lifelong regrets into a healing journey of creative catharsis and bearing witness. A personal archive that exposes and documents collective memories and experiences, The Poem We Sang edits together family photos, recordings, and stories into a visually rich and layered tapestry.

2:30pm: A Fidai Film

In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. They raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. The archive contained historical documents related to, from, and about Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images. Starting with the premise of the plundered image, A Fidai Film explores the visual memory of this looting and re-appropriates images now in the hands of Israeli archivists.

UNDR

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. The film reminds its viewers that Palestine remains a land subjected to aerial surveillance that seeks to appropriate the landscape.

Venue: The Main Cinema, 115 SE Main St, Minneapolis, MN

5:00pm: No Other Land

Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community's mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation since childhood. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families-the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. This film was co-created by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists  during one of the darkest, most terrifying times in the region as an act of creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path toward equality and justice.

7:00pm: To a Land Unknown

Chatila and Reda are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens. But when Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his dangerous drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in an effort to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.

9:15pm: The Teacher

A Palestinian school teacher struggles to reconcile his commitment to political resistance with emotionally supporting one of his students. When a student is killed by an Israeli settler, the teacher's political life becomes intertwined with his role in the community. He reveals his past as well as stories of loss and heartache as he develops a romantic relationship with a volunteer NGO worker from the UK. Starring the inimitable Saleh Bakri, the film depicts a powerful story about how the Israeli occupation in the West Bank impacts the lives of individuals, specifically focusing on the threat of settler violence and the ongoing displacement and destruction of Palestinian land and homes.

10:00pm: Rage Karaoke

!!Rage Karaoke!! (Man Was Not Meant to Be Defeated Unless Destroyed) brings together a Swana metal band for a one-time-only punk political performance art experience. The band will play loud, the karaoke singers will take turns scream-reading lines from anti-Palestinian US legislation into the microphone. Together we will laugh, cry, purge our grief and anger and emerge from the sweaty gig a stronger, more determined resistance movement. Featuring Palestinian musicians Fritz Dorigo and Tarek Abdelqader. Conceived by Saeed Taji Farouky. Sponsored by Extreme Noise.

Tickets $5 in advance, sliding scale $5 - $15 at the door.

Venue: Bryant Lake Bowl, 810 West Lake St, Minneapolis, MN

September 29, 2024

11:00am: Brunch + Conversation: Creating Radical Spaces

At a time of extreme institutional suppression of Palestinian culture, and the criminalization of cultural resistance, it's clear that progressive artists must establish their own autonomous, radical cooperatives and spaces, free from censorship and co-option. Join this open discussion to share tactics on how we can establish and sustain such spaces, and what role they can play in the future cultural landscape of our communities.

Includes filmmakers Saeed Taji Farouk, Fatima Wardy, and Mohamed Kordofani, joined by members of the Body Watani and the Grief and Rage Circle for Palestine.

Venue: The Main Cinema, 115 SE Main St, Minneapolis, MN

1:00pm: Inshallah a Boy

After the sudden death of her husband, Nawal struggles to cope with the upheaval in her life. However, her pain is soon compounded by the possibility of losing her home to her brother-in-law. Desperate to keep her home and provide a stable life for her daughter, Nawal resorts to deception by faking a pregnancy. But as time passes, the lie becomes harder to sustain, and Nawal faces a difficult choice. With only three weeks to find a solution, Nawal embarks on a journey that challenges her fears, beliefs, and morality, as she fights to secure her rightful inheritance and protect her daughter's future.

3:30pm: Dreamworlds

Mizna's 18th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival closes with a pair of special screenings and a reception co-presented with the Walker Art Center.

"Filmmakers make the light. There is always poetry in images and images in poetry: imagination, desire, steadfastness, and liberation are entangled into material manifestations of scenes, vignettes, soundscapes, lightscapes, stillness, and rhythm."-Nasrin Himada

Guest curator Nasrin Himada imagines Palestinian and Indigenous artists' films and videos as proposals for possible worlds, made up of dreams, love for the land, and liberation. The program includes works by Kamal Aljafari, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, NIC Kay, Rhayne Vermette, Sky Hopinka, Tacita Dean, and Tiffany Sia.

Following the screening, Himada and Anishinaabe-kwe curator Wanda Nanibush will discuss their values-grounded approach to working with artists and ideas of land rights, liberation, and Indigenous self-determination.

The Green Ray

A static and silent shot of a sunset off the western coast of Madagascar. Tacita Dean filmed the 'green ray', a legendary natural phenomenon that takes place when, in specific atmospheric circumstances, the last ray of sun passes over the horizon and becomes green

Lore

Images of friends and landscapes are cut, fragmented, and reassembled on an overhead projector as hands guide their shape and construction in this film stemming from Hollis Frampton's (nostalgia). The voice tells a story about a not-too-distant past, a not-too-distant ruin, with traces of nostalgia articulated in terms of lore.

Paradiso, XXXI, 108

This short film takes its title from Dante and Borges, as it considers how we see and understand the processes of war and occupation through archival footage of the Israeli military. Director Kamal Aljafari edits together scenes of the Israeli army conducting tests and strategies in the desert. The images feel at once like documentary footage and staged training in a remote and obscure location. Brilliantly spliced together scenes make military maneuvers comical, mundane, and surreal.

Black Rectangle

This film documents a tedious process of dismantling and reassembling 16 mm found footage. The film collage imitates functions of a curtain, while the recorded optical track describes the flm's subsequent destruction during its first projection.

wait, wait, wait (Renegade)

The #Renegade dance trend that took over social media in 2019 was based on a chopped and looped sound sample of the song "Lottery" by K Camp. The dance was initially choreographed and posted on Instagram by Jaliah Harmon, but it gained fame when White TikTok influencers co-opted and popularized it.

Only the Beloved Keeps Our Secrets

This film weaves together a fragmented script sampled from online recordings of everyday ritual and performance and everyday erasures. Collected over the last five years, mostly from Palestine, moments from this material appear as moving layers with images building in density on top of each other, obscuring what came before in an accumulation of constant testament and constant erasure.

What Rules the Invisible

This film upends archival travelogue footage shot in Hong Kong. Spanning reappropriated amateur footage across the 20th century, the sojourner's gaze-distanced, distorted and even voyeuristic-shows tropes and patterns. The same shots repeat across decades, from landscape to cityscape to street scenes. Sometimes the footage reveals more about the traveler himself.

5:30pm: Closing Night Reception

Mizna's 18th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival closes with a pair of special screenings and a reception co-presented with the Walker Art Center.

5:30pm - 7:00pm: Closing Reception + catering from Baba's

Closing reception will be held in the Bazinet lobby with catering from Baba's and a cash bar. Passholders will receive a complimentary drink ticket. Passholders will receive a code to reserve their tickets to the Sunday events at the Walker. Entry is included with your Closing Night film ticket.

7:00pm: Closing Night Film: Goodbye Julia + post-screening discussion with director Mohamed Kordofani.
7:00pm: Closing Night Film: Goodbye Julia + Post-screening Discussion

Mizna's 18th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival closes with a pair of special screenings and a reception co-presented with the Walker Art Center.

Closing reception will be held in the Bazinet lobby before the film with catering from Baba's and a cash bar. Passholders will receive a complimentary drink ticket. Passholders will receive a code to reserve their tickets to the Sunday events at the Walker.

Goodbye Julia

Wracked by guilt after causing and covering up the murder of a man from the South, Mona, a retired northern Sudanese singer tries to make amends by hiring the man's widow, Julia as a maid, and taking in Julia's son, Daniel. The guilt takes a toll on her relationships, increasing the tension in her marriage and leading Mona to question her social position and lifestyle. Unable to confess her transgressions to Julia or her husband, Mona attempts to adjust to a new status quo, unaware that the country's turmoil may find its way into her home and put her face-to-face with her sins. Set in Khartoum before the separation of South Sudan, Goodbye Julia tackles anti-Black racism and the social and class hierarchies that still impact Sudanese life in the North and South today.

Venue: Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Pl, Minneapolis, MN

Date: September 25 - 29, 2024

Location: Various Venues In Minneapolis, MN

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