Discoveries from Qatar World Cinema

Maryam’s days are becoming indistinguishable from one another. Surrounded by relics of a happier time, she lives each day as though waiting for something to change. Disconnected from her partner and isolated by her own quiet inner-conflict, she is repeatedly disappointed and ignored. After she is pushed to her breaking point, Maryam is finally forced to confront the possibilities outside of her familiar but detrimental routine.

Mariam Shahin has been making films about Gaza for over thirty years. When she moved to Gaza in 2005, she felt a powerful sense of optimism following the Israeli withdrawal. But by 2009, war had badly damaged its infrastructure, neighbourhoods, businesses and communities – and that optimism had evaporated. Now, in the wake of the even more destructive war that began on 7th October 2023, Mariam seeks out the people she has met in Gaza over the years – and reflects on the wasted potential and devastated lives after sixteen years of blockade and a year of one of the most destructive wars in Middle East history.

In the midst of forced migrations, can we move past our animosity to find solace in each other?

For thousands of years, two famous rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, made Iraq one of the most fertile regions in the Middle East. Often called "the cradle of civilisation", the first urban settlers grew up on the lands between the two ancient waterways. But today, things are dramatically different, for the rivers and the people who depend on them. Iraq's ancient rivers and water resources have been seriously damaged by wars, economic sanctions, the construction of upstream dams, pollution and a fall in water levels. The Tigris and Euphrates meet in Basra province, in the south of Iraq, where they form the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Tens of thousands of Iraqis live in marshes.

Between the Calais Jungle, where Tarek Sami spent many months filming; Algeria, which he left at the age of 20; and South Africa, where his brother has now settled, the filmmaker captures faces and stories by the fireside, staving off the fatality of the world’s polarity and reclaiming history. With this graceful film, he delivers a poetic ode to the damned of the earth striving to live their lives.

More journalists have been killed over the course of a year in the Israel-Gaza war than in any other conflict since the Committee to Protect Journalists started collecting data in 1992. This hellish portrait follows three Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza as they are forced put their lives at risk while trying to do their work.

They were orphans, the children of martyrs of the Palestinian revolution in the late sixties. These boys and girls lived and studied in a mixed orphanage in Mount Lebanon in the town of “Souk el Gharb”. It was a challenging existence for these young students. Some of them found salvation in the folk troupe founded by artist Abdallah Haddad in the early seventies. As they mastered cultural traditions, they became icons of the Revolution and toured the world in an era of global solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Decades later, the hundreds of martyrs’ children, now adults, are dispersed in several countries. The long abandoned orphanage still stands bearing the scars of civil war. Memories of this time of geopolitical and personal conflicts are revisited through the memories of former students who share personal narratives of displacement, martyrdom, loss and deprivation, and stir questions related to identity, sacrifice and homeland.

Nadia, a 5-year-old girl, lives in the slums of Casablanca, surrounded by a wall that separates it from the rest of the city. One day, Nadia notices an unusual activity around the wall. Municipality workers deploy their tools and start painting the wall. Why is this sudden interest in the wall?

An experimental endeavor that explores the overlap of domestic and creative spaces, and their relationship to the female artist.

Young Fatima is heartbroken to discover her ailing grandmother and attempts to harness the magical powers of a local Ramadan drummer to make her better. Despite her best efforts, her grandmother peacefully passes away in her sleep—transformed into a benevolent, Emsahar. Tears of joy replace tears of sorrow as Fatima says a final goodbye to her beloved grandmother, watching in awe as she marches away, drumming and singing into the dawn light.

There are few things that do not get lost, no matter how old we are. In the memory of adults there is a childhood and in the beginning of the forest there is a tree and in the history of the walls an old inscription. The women of Asir region, southern Saudi Arabia, created the art of Qatt through abstract engraving and drawing on walls and different objects with bright colors.