At the forefront of the Boston Palestine Film Festival, now entering its 18th year of operation, a vast array of Palestinian stories ranging from family histories to speculative utopias and on-the-ground scenes from Gaza bridge the gap between survival and expression.
The program is run entirely by volunteers, including Programming Director Michael Maria who has been with the organization since 2011. The festival returns on Oct. 18 for a three-day stint at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, with several additional screenings the following week at Coolidge Corner Theatre, MassArt Design and Media Center, the Regent Theatre, and the Brattle Theatre.
Maria is looking forward to a fully in-person program since the pandemic’s drastic pivot, with community support growing in numbers since last October—a combination he credits to widespread activism for the Palestinian liberation movement and global audience members with access to virtual screenings.
“We reached a whole new audience [virtually], because we were able to make our films available to a global audience,” Maria said in an interview with The Beacon. “And there’s a core, solid audience that comes year-after-year. We have a whole new audience that has just awoken to what the Palestinian experience under occupation has been like since October 2023.”
The program’s first film “The Teacher,” directed by Farah Nabulsi, sold out a week before opening at the Museum of Fine Arts. The feature length drama tells the story of a politically active Palestinian schoolteacher grappling with his role in both resistance and education.
Another two films have sold out, and many are nearing total capacity as the festival approaches. The support is bittersweet, Maria acknowledged, because awareness for the Palestinian liberation movement has come at the significant cost of Israeli military action against the nation.
Filmmakers of any nationality and background can be featured in the festival, so long as the film truthfully and honestly represents Palestinian voices.
“It doesn’t matter who you are,” he said about new communities celebrating Palestinian expression.
Maria and other volunteer programmers work in committees to research films, contact filmmakers, and review the hundreds of open-call submissions. This year’s program includes 15 films about the Palestinian experience, a mix of feature length and short films, narrative and animation, and documentary and fiction.
The core of the festival is about nonviolent resistance through arts and culture with the purpose of amplifying a variety of Palestinian stories.
“There’s different roles and hats that people wear in terms of the liberation movement,” Maria said. “[Film] is a form of resistance, by asserting Palestinian existence, presence, and creative output.”
“From Ground Zero” is the only film in this year’s lineup about the current state of Palestine amidst military attacks. The film consists of several genre-diverse short films reflecting both the tragedies and triumphs Gazans experience every day.
Showcasing films pre-October 2023 is still “provocative” and necessary, as Maria put it.
“Any time you’re asserting Palestinian presence, that’s a threat to Israel’s narrative,” Maria said
The films have a valuable purpose in illustrating decades worth of occupation and displacement. Not every film directly addresses the occupation, but it’s a looming theme that shapes the narratives. “Aida Returns” tells the story of director Carol Mansour trying to return her mother’s ashes to her homeland. Both “Bye Bye Tiberias” (dir. Lina Soualem) and “Three Promises” (dir. Yousef Srouji) compiles family photographs, records, and footage to contextualize the Palestinian experience from the lens of their own families.
Films, and art as a whole, reflect the lives of the people making it, and having several films rely on family records and historical footage shows their own experiences, and reinforces Palestinian existence, Maria said.
“These are just ordinary, regular people,” Maria said. “It’s a testament to what people are going through under military occupation. It’s bringing awareness to so many people, and it’s part of the larger picture of change.”
As life in Palestine becomes more dangerous, the future of Palestinian filmmaking will reflect the realities of what is happening on the ground.
“I can imagine the coming years reflecting even more so the horrors of the genocide.” Maria acknowledged the constant influx of devastating footage coming out of Gaza every day. “It’s going to be difficult material to bear witness to.”
But just as films can be a means of survival and acknowledgment, they also exist as entertainment and expression. Large swaths of diverse filmmakers are shedding light on Palestinian joy. “Lyd” is a feature length film directed by Rami Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland that includes animation to answer what a thriving, ancient Palestinian town might look like if it had never been under occupation.
The Boston Palestine Film Festival wants to emphasize the full extent of Palestinian narratives, showcasing the diversity of their experiences.
“There’s always … films that emphasize Palestinian life and the positive aspects,” Maria said. “Ordinary stories that become extraordinary.”
