פאָלקס פון Lebanon

Once there was a boy who loved drawing the sea. One day, he dove into the sea, hoping to escape war. However, he was trapped between screens that had appropriated his story. The international media captured Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body on Turkey’s shores. And they never let go.

Taking the idea of loss and dispossession as a starting point, this film is a reflection on photography and its people. It looks at the position of the individual within the context of war and displacement, as well as how photographs have become the sole record of that displacement, at the risk of them being dispersed as well. The film takes us on a journey from the point of view of a reproduction stand and a white backlit frame on which stories of war and loss unfold, from photographer Van Leo talking about the Armenian genocide of 1915 to the funeral of the assassinated Lebanese political leader Maarouf Saad filmed with a Super 8 camera in Saida in 1975. Between them, accounts of displacement and struggle of Palestinians are told through the photographs of Astra Abu Jamra, Samiyyeh Khairi and Abdel Salam Ujayli.

Shows the ruination of film heritage in Lebanon, navigated through the country’s cinematic heydays in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This period witnessed a rise of Egyptian producers and directors moving to Lebanon to make films partly due to Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian cinema.

The film depicts the last days of eastern Aleppo’s siege. Just before its fall, Milad Amin, residing in Beirut, follows up with his friend Ghith, an activist and photographer, who like so many other civilians still remains in the besieged city. Following Ghith via his camera through the ruins of the city, we hear the two friends talk about people’s situations while waiting for their fate amidst the fighting parties. The film is an intimate and personal recording of civilians’ sufferings during this time of siege, hunger, and war – and a recording of both the relationship of activists brought together during the civil movements and of the geographic distances that separate them due to violence, bombing, and killing.

Suliman Mohamed Ibrahim Elnour’s graduation film depicts everyday life in a school in Yemen.

Between his fiancee and his passion for a married woman, Karim's vision of life will be transformed.

Somewhere, amid a tangle of borders, a refugee camp. People trapped in a situation that becomes more absurd every day, trying to live a human existence. We don't see their faces. We don't see the places they talk about. However, we are drawn very close to their intimate experience of the world as we follow, line by line, the maps they are drawing to represent the complexity of the spaces around them.

Daya Al-Taseh is an anti-IS satirical web series created by a group of Syrian video activists. They produce the episodes from their base in Gaziantep, Turkey. After receiving threats from IS supporters they leave to Istanbul with the aim to broadcast an improved topical-comedy show for Syrian TV. But obstacles keep arising in an already unstable situation, pressuring the group’s work and friendships. They are forced to make decisions about the future of their activism and the possibility of stable life in Istanbul, or elsewhere.

He works as a football coach at Dokki Sports Club but does not succeed in making any significant achievements in his career, which makes Habashi not agree to marry his daughter Osha (Bossi), but he has a last chance .

Thanks to the magical powers of an antique pocket watch, Saad relives a mysterious episode of his youth – a time during the 1930s when he nearly lost his father, but also found the love of his life. In recalling this period, ‘Clockwise’ relates the folktale of how fijiri, the entrancing music of Khaleeji pearl divers, came to be. Atique adopts Saad when they are the lone survivors of a tragic boat wreck, and the two lead a humble life in a village by the sea. One night, Atique happens upon a group of jinn as he seeks out the source of an enchanting melody in a nearby ruin; their leader, Adsaan, agrees to teach Atique this fijiri music, but only if he vows not to share it with anyone else. Adsaan’s one condition proves very challenging to Atique, who becomes eager to celebrate the art of fijiri with a wider audience. Saad, meanwhile, falls in love with Jeena, a renegade jinni who, as it turns out, just might hold the key to his father’s salvation.

Day one of the FIFA World Cup. The residents of Beirut have eagerly anticipated the big event, but for some reason the telecast is interrupted by strange audio waves. Soon they realize that an Israeli attack is in progress, but instead of running away and hiding, they rush to their rooftops where they can witness a much bigger live event.

A parable on the Syrian present by mixing footage of the protests in Syria and a circus performance that involves a lion and goes awry with a nod to Fellini’s cinema.

To transport a newly purchased sofa to your home is an easy task. In a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, this task becomes a Sisyphean journey revealing the complexities and absurdities of everyday life in the Shatila camp in Lebanon.

In a working class suburb of Cairo, Egypt, where lives are intertwined and everybody knows each other's business, thirteen year old Fingo wants to hang lights in his street for Ramadan. Many in his neighborhood try to dissuade him, or say it's not possible. This makes him more determined, but he only has two days, and the obstacles he faces seem insurmountable.

As a World Bank team visits an Egyptian village to investigate the transformation in agricultural management system, a TV presenter prepares a couple of episodes on the life of village women and a group of students visit a museum in Cairo with artificial figures that are supposed to resemble the life of Egyptian farmer.

'Ibn al-'Amm' shed light on the eighteen years Riyad al-Turk spent as a political prisoner under Hafez al-Assad, before his son Bashar al-Assad imprisoned him for two years at the beginning of his reign.

On the outskirts of the city, right by the water, lies an arterial road that leads to Beirut’s international airport. Most of the houses standing there are illegal constructions, quickly erected for a life alongside the road. Karam Ghossein, who also works as a cameraman for other video artists from Lebanon, combines pictures from a commissioned production he shot on the occasion of a friend’s wedding in 2004 with street impressions from the present day. Past events can’t be told apart from the observations of today: a kaleidoscope of stories that take place on this highway.