MENA 2022: Opening Ceremony
MENA Film Festival's celebrated Opening Ceremony returns again with an offering of regional dishes, live music, filmmaker talks and Q&A's and of course a selection of Vancouver premiers to kick off this year's screenings! Nov 26 at VIFF Centre, from 2PM.
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MENA 2022: Foragers
Foragers moves between documentary and fiction to depict the dramas between the Israeli Nature Protection Authority and Palestinian foragers. With a wry sense of humor, the film captures the inherited love, resilience and knowledge of these traditions, over an eminently political backdrop.
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MENA 2022: Futurisms
Futurisms uses aesthetics of computer animation, technofeminism and Arab futurism to imagine futures beyond the damages of capitalism, patriarchy, racism and homophobia.
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MENA 2022: Faya Dayi
Faya Dayi unfurls as a hallucinogenic cinematic reverie, capturing intimate moments in exquisite monochrome cinematography and time-bending editing to create a ravishing sensory experience that hovers between consciousness and dreaming.
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MENA 2022: You Say MENA I Say SWANA
A conversation about the terminology denoting the MENA/SWANA region.
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MENA 2022: Broken Mirrors
By tracing the development work of the new choreographic performance by choreographer Bouziane Bouteldja, the film sheds light on the dancers' questions about identity in a conservative Moroccan society that believes in traditional jobs and family stability.
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MENA 2022: From Zaatar to Wild Salmon: Protecting Indigenous Sovereignty
A conversation on returning to Indigenous sovereignty through the reclamation of traditional foods and land-based cultural practices from Turtle Island and Palestine, with the documentary Foragers as a starting point.
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MENA 2022: You Resemble Me
When the bond is broken between two sisters. Director Dina Amer takes one of the darkest tales of our time, the story of Muslim terror in the West, and deconstructs it in a story about family, love, sisterhood, and fractured identity.
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MENA 2022: Systems of Power
Systems of Power investigates the local consequences of global power structures within the SWANA region. Through experimental and narrative form, these films reflect on the impacts of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy in everyday life.
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MENA 2022: Collective Care
Collective Care looks at the importance of community and mutual aid within the SWANA region and celebrates these practices as a tool of resisting oppressive forces that damage individuals and the environment.
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MENA 2022: Snow and the Bear
Aslı is a recently appointed nurse to a small, distant town, where the winter has become seemingly endless this year and raised rumors of bears awakening early from their winter-sleep.
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MENA 2022: Generations
Generations is a bundle that deepens our understanding of home, lineage and family for communities within the SWANA region and its diaspora. These films discuss intergenerational trauma, the tension between 'here' and 'there' and how land follows us wherever we go.
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MENA 2022: Flee
Flee is a powerful, deeply personal animated documentary that tells the story of Amin Nawabi as he grapples with a secret he's kept for 20 years; one that threatens to derail the life he's built for himself and his soon-to-be husband.
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MENA 2022: How to Finance Your Film: Where and Who to Pitch It To?
We bring to local filmmakers two representatives from Canada Media Fund and Telefilm Canada to help you navigate these federal funding agencies. You are hoping to make a short film or feature length? Join us for an intimate workshop session.
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MENA 2022: Geographies
Geographies explores our direct relationship to nature and how our survival is deeply interconnected with the land. These films discuss how climate change impacts our relationships to both natural and human made spaces, and the creatures we share them with.
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MENA 2022: The Stranger
In a small village in the occupied Golan Heights, the life of a desperate unlicensed doctor who is going through an existential crisis, takes another unlucky turn when he encounters a man wounded in the war in Syria.
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MENA 2022: Montréal Girls
A Middle-Eastern medical school student, new to Montreal, puts his relationship with his father at risk when he forfeits his education after being forever changed by two young women. Montréal Girls follows his journey and his quest for love and enlightenment.
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MENA 2022: Constellations
Constellations is a mix of local Vancouver-based and Canadian talents. As constellations change relative to where you stand, these shorts are a unique accumulation of our specific place and time.
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MENA 2022: Award Ceremony
Come and join us as our dedicated jury will give out awards to the films in competition, including the inaugural Faces of MENA Award.
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