Events

The Leeds Palestinian Film Festival goes international for its sixth year, with tickets now on sale for its first globally accessible online programme; providing local, national and international audiences an even more accessible way to support and engage with Palestinian art, culture, history and politics through the medium of film.

The festival takes place between 14-28th November, 2020.

For this year, the festival has also announced ​the fourteen films and three speaker events that will all be available to ​stream online, and worldwide for select films. The ambition of the festival is to highlight outstanding films which focus on Palestine, changing one-dimensional views on the region. This includes documentaries, animations, features and short films made by established and emerging filmmakers from Palestine and across the globe.

This year’s programme sees each film curated into one of four strands:

​As Seen By Annemarie Jacir focuses on acclaimed and multi-award winning Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir with two recent films ​Wajib (2018) and ​When I Saw You (2012), both study parental-child relationships against the backdrop of political unrest in Palestine and the wider Middle Eastern region. This will be accompanied by an ​‘In Conversation with…’ ​event hosted by Festival representative ​Catriona Mahmoud​, with Palestinian-Egyptian documentary filmmaker, and leader of London’s Radical Film School, ​Saeed Taji Farouky​.

The ​As Seen By Children strand focuses on two films demonstrating the region’s conflict through the perspective of children. Animated feature ​The Tower (2018) draws from real life experiences to tell the stories of Palestinian children who find themselves in a Beirut refugee camp, while short film Samouni Street (​ 2012) observes the creative output of children from an extended family living in Gaza. The filmmaker has requested that all proceeds from Samouni Street​ be donated to the Samouni family.

As Seen Through Creative Eyes is a strand that includes t​hree shorts and two medium-length documentaries about the perseverance of keeping art and culture from the region alive. Films in this theme demonstrate the ​intersection of art and activism through underground music scenes, traditional storytelling, the historic significance of the textile industry and the multi-generational fight for creative expression.

The festival’s final curated strand this year is ​Annexation, Occupation, Defiance​, which sees ​five more documentaries take centre stage in telling the powerful stories of resistance from across the globe. This strand includes the ​UK Premiere of ​Jews Step Forward (2015), which will be accompanied by a panel discussion with former MP John Battle, former General Secretary of Pax Christi in the UK Pat Gaffney, retired US physician, women’s health activist and ​Jews Step Forward interviewee Dr Alice Rothchild, and Palestinian University of Leeds student and activist Adam Saeed. This event is sponsored by the J&P Commission of the Leeds Diocese and Pax Christi in the Leeds Diocese.

Ticketing

The Leeds Palestinian Film Festival is delighted to have received funding from Leeds City Councillors as well as generous donations from the public to their crowd-funding appeal. All other costs are met by ticket sales, with any profits going back into the Festival for the following year, and any ​additional proceeds being donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians​.

Tickets are available on a ​‘Pay-What-You-Feel’ sliding scale, giving the audience the choice to donate based on income, number of expected viewers watching, and preferred contribution to the Festival and Medical Aid for Palestinians. Most films are accessible to audiences across the globe.

A ​Festival Pass is also available for UK audiences wishing to gain access to the entire film programme across the two week festival period. This is also priced on a donation based sliding scale and available to purchase for ​£25, £30 or £40​.

For more: https://leedspff.org.uk/