PALESTINIAN REPRESENTATION AT STOCKFISH
Films hold power and offer a voice to people who have often been excluded from the discourse or misrepresented. During times of such unrest, Stockfish finds it important to shed light on Palestinian filmmaking and artists. It is therefore Stockfish’s honor to be screening two films by Palestinian filmmakers, one documentary film and one narrative film, which challenge stereotypes and shed light on the experiences of Palestinian people.
The Teacher
Director: Farah Nabulsi
A Palestinian schoolteacher struggles to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance with the chance of a new relationship with volunteer-worker Lisa and his emotional support for one of his students Adam.
Farah Nabulsi is a British-Palestinian filmmaker and human rights activist. The film was shot entirely in Palestine and is set in present-day Palestine. Nabulsi describes the film as a “human drama set in a political landscape” and “a story about characters that represent a severely marginalised and underrepresented people”. She further states that she “needed to make this film to cope with the injustice [she’s] witnessed.”
Bye Bye Tiberias
Director: Lina Soualem
Leaving her native village to follow her dream of becoming an actress, Hiam Abbass also left behind her mother, grandmother and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to journey through the vanished places among the scattered memories of four generations of daring Palestinian women.
Lina Soualem is a French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker and actress who was born and is based in Paris. Braiding together old and new family records with pre-1948 archival material, including poetry and personal narrative, Soualem tells a meditative story about four generations of women working hard to mend the seams of multiple separations, forced and chosen.