Day 5-Synopsis

Hope

Amal Basry, one of the seven survivors, tells the story of four hundred Iraqi asylum seekers who were pitched into the ocean in 2001 when their people-smuggling boat from Indonesia sank on its way to Australia.

Amal Basry watched “The Titanic” at a cinema in Baghdad the night before she fled Iraq. Eighteen months later, in October 2001, four hundred asylum seekers were pitched into the ocean when their people-smuggling boat from Indonesia sank on its way to Australia. Amal Basry was one of the seven survivors. In public, Amal became an advocate for the survivors. In private, she fought to reunite her fragmented family, cope with illness and the personal consequences of the disaster.

Language English and Arabic
Director & Producer Steve Thomas

Running (Berlari)

Captures the experiences of Burmese refugees in Malaysia

Running follows the plight of different individuals who ran away from their homes in Burma in the hopes of freedom and a better life. They are each a refugee, asylum seeker and/or stateless person. As they tell their stories, they delve into their difficult lives in Malaysia in search of stability and the hope of a better future that is denied to them in their home country. Their story represents the stories of many other refugees who are currently in Malaysia.

Language Malay-Chinese
By: Mien Lor

Shahed Shatila (Witness Shatila)

Looks at the situation of Palestinian refugees in Shatila camps, with a special focus on the work done by a group of students and artists with the youngster Palestinians.

The film looks at the situation of Palestinian refugees in Shatila Camps. A group of students and artists who visited the camps conducted art workshops with the youngster Palestinians.

Language Arabic
Director Nagy Ismail

Crossing the Dust

A five-year old boy named Sadam struggles to find his way home in post-American invasion Iraq.

During the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, a 5-year-old Arab boy gets lost. Two Pershmega (Kurdish resistance) soldiers, Rashid and Azad, who are fighting against Saddam Hussein’s troops, find the boy wandering around in the chaos which ensued after the war. Azad, who lost his brother in the horrific Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the north, intends to take the boy back to his family. When Rashid finds out that the boy’s name is Saddam, he wants no part in it. He would rather get on with delivering food to the other soldiers and begins to torment the boy. A fierce argument starts between the two men. They take the boy everywhere but are unable to find anybody who recognizes him. Rashid and Azad try to hand the boy over to the Americans but they refuse to take him. Even the aged mullah at the mosque doesn’t want to help. Then their car is stolen. But they find it abandoned later on. Meanwhile the boy’s parents are searching for him. The father is angry that they decided to call their son Saddam. He blames his wife for giving the boy a name which is now taboo and is determined to change it. Two militants, still loyal to Saddam, lure Rashid and Azad into deathtrap near to the boy’s home. Only Rashid survives. Left alone with the boy, he is forced to accept him after all.

Language Kurdish and Arabic
Director Shawkat Amin Korki

Slingshot Hip Hop

Young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank, and inside Israel employ Hip Hop as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty

Slingshot Hip Hop braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel as they discover Hip Hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them

Language Arabic, English, and Hebrew
Director Jackie Reem Salloum

Day 4-Synopsis

The Presence of Absence in the Ruins of Kafr Bir'im

Through his narrative and poetry, Ibrahim Issa recounts his experiences and youth in the Palestinian village of Kafr Bir’im and the hardships of a life in exile.

Shot on location in the ruins and cemetery of Kafr Bir’im, a Palestinian village located in the Northern Galilee, the film introduces the viewer to Mr. Ibrahim Essa, an elderly poet who survived the ethnic cleansing of his village in 1948. Through his narrative and poetry, Ibrahim Issa recounts his experiences as a youth in the village, the hardships of a life in exile and the intense emotional, physical and historical connections to the land that he shares with the 5,000,000 Palestinians who currently live in the Palestinian Diaspora.
Language Arabic
Director John Halaka

This Palestinian Life

Documents the aspects of perseverance or steadfastness of the Palestinian nonviolent struggle against Israeli occupation and the deliberate, ongoing, illegal annexation of Palestinian land.

THIS PALESTINIAN LIFE is a film about people who persevere despite the odds stacked against them. The film documents specifically the aspects of perseverance or steadfastness of the Palestinian nonviolent struggle against Israeli occupation and the deliberate, ongoing, illegal annexation of Palestinian land. An Arabic term used for everyday acts of nonviolent resistance is sumoud – steadfastness, perseverance. In the film, Egyptian activist and filmmaker, Philip Rizk, tells the stories of Palestinian villagers who attempt to remain steadfast, to persevere, in the face of settler violence, the injustice and duplicity of the Israeli government.
Language English and Arabic
Director Philip Rizk

Rightful yet Right less

Explores the Sudanese refugees’ failed expectations, hopelessness, and despair in Cairo.

Over one million Sudanese who escaped their war-torn country now live in Cairo. Under international human rights agreements, these refugees have the right to education, employment, health care, welfare and protection. But, in Egypt, they are right-less. This documentary explores the refugees' failed expectations, hopelessness, and despair.
Language English & Arabic
Director Juliana Tarfur

Monkey Dance

Three Cambodian-American teenagers come of age in a world shadowed by their parents' nightmares of the Khmer Rouge.

Three Cambodian-American teenagers come of age in a world shadowed by their parents' nightmares of the Khmer Rouge. Traditional Cambodian dance links them to their parents’culture, but fast cars, hip consumerism, and new romance pull harder. Gradually coming to appreciate their parents’ sacrifices, the three teens find a balance between their parents’ dreams and their own.
Language English and Khmer
Director Julie Mallozzi

Day 3-Synopsis

Seoul Train

Captures the life and death of North Koreans as they try to escape their homeland and China.

With its riveting footage of a secretive “underground railroad,” SEOUL TRAIN is the gripping documentary exposé into the life and death of North Koreans as they try to escape their homeland and China. SEOUL TRAIN also delves into the complex geopolitics behind this growing and potentially explosive humanitarian crisis. By combining vérité footage, personal stories and interviews with experts and government officials, SEOUL TRAIN depicts the flouting of international laws by major countries, the inaction and bureaucracy of the United Nations, and the heroics of activists that put themselves in harm’s way to save the refugees.
Language English, Korean, Mandarin
Directors Jim Butterworth,Lisa Sleeth,Aaron Lubarksy

Iraqis in Egypt: Time is Running Out

Captures the hardships and challenges faced by 5 Iraqi families living now in exile, in Cairo

A short documentary film that follows the lives of five Iraqi families who are now living in exile in Cairo. They recall the disturbing events that forced them to flee their homes and discuss the challenges they are now facing in Egypt as they try to live as refugees. While all of the Iraqis featured in this film have been persecuted for different reasons, once in Egypt they all find themselves subjected to similar problems as they struggle to survive. For now, their lives are in limbo as they wait for the help they so desperately need.
Language English and Arabic
Director Joshua Van Parag

Genocide in me

Dealing with the impact of the 1915 Armenian genocide, this film captures the life of Araz Artinian – one of the five million Armenian refugees – who lives in Canada and who asks herself the universal question “Where do I belong?”.

An angry, tender and funny film, The Genocide in Me deals with the impact of the 1915 Armenian Genocide on the life of young filmmaker Araz Artinian, who has had to carry this legacy since her childhood. In this personal journey, Artinian, torn between her father’s passionate commitment to the Armenians of the Diaspora and her own personal needs, confronts the reality of living in a multicultural melting pot, and asks herself the universal question “Where do I belong?”. The documentary deftly weaves together 8mm film footage shot by the filmmaker’s grandfather from the 1940’s to the 1980’s in Egypt and in Canada, with riveting photographic archives of the Genocide, the filmmaker’s present-day video journals, and a deeply honest narration. Through moving interviews with the last survivors of this Genocide in the USA and through a risky trip to Turkey, Artinian goes back to the origin of her father’s obsession, an obsession born of the Turkish denial and the fear of losing the Armenian culture.
Language English
Director Araz Artinian

Arna’s Children

In spite of her Zionist family background, Arna starts a theatre group for Palestinian children as a way to help them express their frustration, anger, bitterness, and fear.

ARNA'S CHILDREN tells the story of a theatre group that was established by Arna Mer Khamis. Arna comes from a Zionist family and, in the 1950s, married a Palestinian Arab, Saliba Khamis. On the West Bank, she opened an alternative education system for children whose regular life was disrupted by the Israeli occupation. The theatre group that she started engaged children from Jenin, helping them to express their everyday frustrations, anger, bitterness and fear. Arna's son Juliano, director of this film, was also one of the directors of Jenin's theatre. With his camera, he filmed the children during rehearsal periods from 1989 to 1996. Now, he goes back to see what happened to them. Yussef committed a suicide attack in Hadera in 2001, Ashraf was killed in the battle of Jenin, Alla leads a resistance group. Shifting back and forth in time, the film reveals the tragedy and horror of lives trapped by the circumstances of the Israeli occupation.
Language English & Arabic
By: Juliano Mer Khamis

New Year Baby

Impelled to confront and give human face to her childhood shadows, Socheata travels to Cambodia to unravel the mystery shrouding her family’s survival and eventual escape.

Born in a Thai refugee camp on Cambodian New Year, filmmaker Socheata Poeuv grew up in the United States deemed by her family “the lucky one,” fated to good fortune. As a child in the United States, she knew that her parents had survived oppression and genocide under the Khmer Rouge, but they never spoke of it aloud. Twenty-five years later in the suburbs of Texas, her parents make a startling admission, and the impact of the Khmer Rouge suddenly becomes very real. Impelled to confront and give human face to her childhood shadows, Socheata travels to Cambodia to unravel the mystery shrouding her family’s survival and eventual escape. Her voyage parallels her family’s emotional journey through a series of revelations: unimaginable sacrifice; promises made and kept; the fierce and solemn love for those who were left behind, and finally, one long unsung hero, a “Cambodian cowboy,” is unveiled. With disarming candor, humor and poetic animation, Poeuv’s debut feature resurrects memory and personal history to reclaim her family’s past, and what is easily a heartbreaking story also becomes one of triumph.
Language English
Director Socheata Poeuv

Day 2-Synopsis

Chronicles of a Refugee: Part IV: Identity Without Homeland

Unpacks the meaning and attributes of Palestinian identity in different parts of the world after 60 years of dispossession and refugee status

Unpacks the meaning and attributes of Palestinian identity in different parts of the world after 60 years of dispossession and refugee status. Palestinians debate the role of refugee camps, usefulness of citizenship and the effect of living outside the Arab world on Palestinian identity.
Language Arabic and English
Directors Adam Shapiro, Perla Issa, Aseel Mansour

Relocated Mountains

After 25 years of exile due to Saddam’s repression of the Kurds, Sirwan travels back to Iraq in order to reconnect with the family he was forced to leave.

Synopsis In 1982, five year-old Sirwan Namo from Northern Iraq flees from Saddam Hussein’s military repression of the Kurds. He spends 16 years living in a refugee camp in northern Iran. In 2007, now thirty years old, Sirwan and his family resettle in New Zealand. Feeling that he cannot simply carry on living a good life whilst ignoring his past, we follow Sirwan’s journey as he travels back to Iraq, 25 years since fleeing, in order to reconnect with the family he was forced to leave.
Language English and Arabic

Director Matthew Metcalfe

Mujahjaheen

Captures the daily trials and tribulations of a Sudanese refugee family in Cairo’s unfamiliar environment.

Hussein Abdel Hameed, his wife Hanan and their five children fled war and discrimination in their native Sudan 7 years ago. They came to Egypt with hopes of better life only to find themselves facing hardships and alienation in an unfamiliar environment.
Language Arabic
Directors Jasmin Bauomy, Mariam Mekiwi, and Sarah Wali

Telling Strings

Connecting the history of two generations of Palestinians (Elias Jubran and his children), the film questions cultural identity between protest, resignation, and hope

The film connects the history of two generations of Palestinians: Elias Jubran (born 1933), a music teacher and oud builder in Al Jaleel in Galileo, and his children who all live very different lives in Israel, or have indeed left the country in search of a more open existence. What is necessary so that a culture – stuck in the threatening environment of the Israeli State – may continue to develop itself? The film questions cultural identity between protest, resignation and hope.
Language Arabic
Director Anne-Marie Haller

Day 1-Synopsis

Giraffe in the Rain (animated)

Fitting into a new home is not easy, especially when you are a giraffe and everyone around you is a dog.

In Djambali, water is scarce, and what little there is, is reserved for the luxurious swimming pool of Sir Lion. When one brave giraffe attempts to tap into the lion's supply, she is caught and deported from her own country and forced to seek asylum up north. Fitting into her new home is not easy, especially when everyone around her is a dog.

Salt of This Sea

Soraya, a Palestinian-American woman is stubborn and determined to reclaim what is hers and fulfill her life-long dream of "returning" to Palestine.

Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather's savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Direct, stubborn, and determined to reclaim what is hers, she fulfills her life-long dream of "returning" to Palestine. Slowly she is taken apart by the reality around her and is forced to confront her own anger. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even if it's illegal.

HUNT FOR A SUITABLE VENUE

The venue for the upcoming Cairo Refugee Film Festival had to be chosen with a lot of care. It’s location had to provide for easy accessibility and be popular enough to attract the “regulars” at the venue. And of course the rent had to fit within our budget (Money matters have been the bane of organizing this festival).

Sakya or the Culture Wheel at Zamalek was our foremost choice. Its reputation for encouraging new talent gave us hope. But our hopes were dashed when we realized that hosting the festival at the Sakya would require dealing with a maze of bureaucratic tangles.

We had the option of hosting the festival at the American University of Cairo (AUC) campus in downtown but the AUC premises can be construed a very ‘elitist” venue. It may deter the average Egyptian from attending the festival. Further, we wanted to avoid the festival being perceived as being meant for the academia, which would be the case if AUC were to be the venue.

Cairo Opera House was also considered as a venue for the festival before we finally decided on the Rawabet theatre, which had collaborated earlier in 2007 with the UNHCR and the Townhouse Gallery to celebrate the World Refugee Day.

The Rawabet theatre is located next to the factory space of Townhouse in downtown Cairo. The neighbourhood is a “working area” with car mechanics, sign painters, carpenters and coffee shops occupying the surrounding space. Probably the best example of bringing art to the community. This was commensurate with the ideology for the refugee film festival which was bringing using art (the films) to bring communities together.

The physical address of the venue is
3, Hussein Al Me'mar Pasha St., Off Mahmoud Bassiouny St.Cairo,

Agonies and Angst of the Films Committee

Films had started trickling in much to the delight of the films committee. What had seemed unachievable some time back-getting quality films to be screened at the festival- now seemed attainable.

It was refreshing to come across filmmakers who really believed in what we were doing. Like Anne Marie Jacir, the award winning Palestinian filmmaker of “Salt of this Sea”, who intervened on behalf of the Cairo Refugee Film Festival with the producers of the film. The result was that we got the perfect film to open our festival with.

The Movies that Matter, a Netherlands based foundation proved to be a good resource for starting on the kind of films that we wanted for the films that we wanted for the festival. We had approached them for funds-that took some time reaching fruition but their recommendation as to films that can be screened was timely and welcome. We also drew inspiration from other Film Festivals around the world.

While selecting films, the films committee had to strike a balance between art and academics. The Cairo Refugee film Festival aims to bring the narratives of the trials, tribulations and the triumphs of the refugee community into the public sphere and at the same time ensure that the narratives are entertaining enough to attract the host community (Egyptians).


At times, the films committee felt like a trapeze artist walking the tightrope. Some films were really interesting but too academic. Some were entertaining but not a true reflection of the circumstances. Over the course of 20 meetings or maybe more, the films committee selected films that would be educating, entertaining and non-controversial too.

Illegal Economic Migrants Vs Refugees-This issue was debated extensively during the meetings and the sound bytes generated would have been enough to fill the pages of a research project on the subject. We wanted films that dealt with refugees who had fled their countries due to persecution and share stories about their success in rebuilding their lives despite all odds.

We are proud of getting films like “Slingshot Hip Hop”, which will be premiering in Egypt at the Cairo Refugee Film Festival and was the official selection at the Sundance Film Festival 2008. “The New Year Baby” is the winner of the 2007 Amsterdam International Film Festival Movies That Matter Award. It is a documentary film on a girl born in a refugee camp on Cambodian New Year.