Part of Media City Film Festival 2024

Kamal Aljafari, Palestine, digital, 78 min, 2024

In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time, it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images. Taking this as a premise, A Fidai Film aims to create a counternarrative to this loss, presenting a form of cinematic sabotage that seeks to reclaim and restore the looted memories of Palestinian history. It is a poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, told through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques.—Doha Film Institute

Aljafari has also documented not just the evidence of his stolen homeland, but also a new way of filming, a whole new kind of cinema: the cinema of the negatives. He gets the same negatives and reverses their light and shadows, as it were. What the Israelis have highlighted, he darkens, and what they have shoved into the background, he brings to the foreground; and thus, where they show, he sabotages, and where they hide, he exposes.—Hamid Dabashi

Streaming Details: This film is available to stream globally.

Program Partners: This film is co-presented with The River and the Land and Prismatic Ground.