By Arab Desk
According to what the organizers of the festival have announced, it will take place in two periods, the first on June 2 and 3 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, and the second on June 9 and 10 at Rice University in the same city, under the slogan “Your Shack is Raised” in support of the Palestinian flag.
According to Ruba Sawaya, festival president, to Sky News Arabia, the new session “will be special, as the selected films have toured international festivals and won prestigious awards”.
Selected movies
Among the films selected for the Houston Film Festival: “Gaza Weekend” directed by Basil Khalil, a feature film novelist, whose events take place within the framework of black comedy, and are closer to the imagination, based on the conditions at Gaza, which he describes as the safest city in the world, contrary to reality.
The film stars Mona Hawa, Adam Bakry, Maria Rizk and Britain’s Stephen Mangan.
The second day presents my film “Mediterranean Fever” directed by Maha Al-Hajj, represented by Amer Hleelhel and Ashraf Farah, nominated by Palestine to represent it at the Oscars, and won the award for best screenplay in the “Un Certain Regard” section ” at the Cannes Film Festival, and deals with the sense of homeland through Walid and Jalal, who They live in the city of Haifa, and despite their different orientations, they meet at a point that makes them more of a single block.
As for the conclusion, it will be with the film “Alam”, which is the first feature film of director Firas Khoury, and it was screened at the last Toronto International Film Festival, and it won 3 awards at the International Film Festival Cairo, the Golden Pyramid Award for Best Film, the Best Actor Award for Palestinian actor Mahmoud Bakri and the Audience Award. .
The most recent revolves around a group of teenagers, who decide to participate in an operation that risks costing them their lives in prison. He is represented by Mahmoud Bakri, Sirin Khas, Muhammad Karaki and Ahmed Zaghmouri, with as guests d honor Saleh Bakri and Amer Hlehel.
In addition to these feature films, the festival will present short films, including “Palestine 87” by Bilal Al-Khatib, “The Angel of Gaza” by Ahmed Mansour, and the short documentary “Last May in Palestine” by Rabih Eid.
“We speak Palestine”
Ola Al-Sheikh, one of the organizers of the festival, expressed to “Sky News Arabia” her joy at participating for the second consecutive year, considering that the importance of the festival “we tell about Palestine through cinematographic films at a belonging to the city of Houston in the state of Texas, and that in itself is the biggest challenge.”
She added: “Young independent Palestinian cinema has contributed to the representation of Palestine and its dreams at international festivals, and has won numerous awards, and names such as Elia Suleiman and Hani Abu-Assad have appeared there. .
The Houston Palestinian Film Festival was established in 2007 in the US city of Houston to convey the issues of Palestine and its identity to Palestinians in the diaspora and around the world. It belongs to an organization which, according to the organizers of the festival, is non-profit, non-political and non-religious.
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Source: Houston Palestinian Film Festival kicks off in June
