Schedule
Curious about traditional Palestinian dancing? Join hands at our dabke workshop featuring the legendary El-Funoun Dance Troupe and learn more about its history while getting your steps in!
This powerful and suspenseful epic charts a group of characters caught up in the tumultuous historic moment when Palestinians united against Britain’s colonial rule.
Through a series of intimate video calls, an Iranian filmmaker grows closer to a young Palestinian photographer as the conditions in Gaza crumble around her.
This powerful and suspenseful epic charts a group of characters caught up in the tumultuous historic moment when Palestinians united against Britain’s colonial rule.
Through a series of intimate video calls, an Iranian filmmaker grows closer to a young Palestinian photographer as the conditions in Gaza crumble around her.
With a terrified Palestinian girl on the line awaiting help, emergency volunteers scramble to send an ambulance across Gaza to save her in this harrowing true story.
With a terrified Palestinian girl on the line awaiting help, emergency volunteers scramble to send an ambulance across Gaza to save her in this harrowing true story.
Have you ever wanted to dive into the history of tatreez and even learn some of its basic techniques? Now is your chance.
Join us for a special short series event revolving around the use of art as expression while under a brutal occupation.
Building on the framework of his 2002 documentary, “Jenin, Jenin”, Director Mohammad Bakri revisits the Jenin refugee camp, reflecting on the devastation caused by Israel’s 2023 military invasion.
Preceded by $17.74 and UPSHOT.
Join us for a special screening of “A State of Passion”, a gripping documentary about a British-Palestinian doctor working round the clock in Gazan hospitals while enduring constant bombardment finds himself at the vanguard of Palestinian resistance.
Preceded by THE OLIVE TREE SAID TO ME
Exclusively archival footage is edited into a detailed, historical reconstruction of the aggression faced by Palestinians.
Preceded by ABU SALMA, HIDE & SEEK, WHEN WEATHER PERMITS, AND SHATTERED MEMORY.
Conclude the 24th annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival by joining us for a brunch with special guests and art.
Building on the framework of his 2002 documentary, “Jenin, Jenin”, Director Mohammad Bakri revisits the Jenin refugee camp, reflecting on the devastation caused by Israel’s 2023 military invasion.
Preceded by $17.74 and UPSHOT.
Chatila and Reda are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens. But when Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his dangerous drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in an effort to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.
Preceded by BLOOD LIKE WATER.
This documentary film profiles the terrains of the Indian reservation and the Palestinian refugee camp - “spaces of exception” - that have become essential in the struggle for decolonization and indigenous autonomy.
Preceded by عَ السطح / On the Rooftop, THE SOUND OF CLOUDS, AND EXCEPTION.
In her relentless pursuit of a memory that reinforces her sense of belonging, Areeb crosses paths with Ahmed, a parkour athlete in Gaza, sparking a journey where conflicting aspirations intersect. Nostalgia meets with ambition, and the weight of a confined past meets with an unpredictable future.
Preceded by MASHED POTATOES AND MAQLUBA.
After years of right-wing assaults on higher education, attacks took a new form in 2023 and 2024 that has been described as the new McCarthyism. The documentary unfolds as a story of college campuses as sites of both rebellion and repression, places where personal and collective histories converge in unexpected ways.
Preceded by SALT, SIRI MIRI, AND THE DEER’S TOOTH.
In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. “A Fidai Film” explores the visual memory of this looting and appropriates images now in the hands of Israeli archives.
Preceded by IN A MOMENT, I’LL GET BACK TO YOU, FORGET ME NOT, AND PINK SWING.
Exclusively archival footage is edited into a detailed, historical reconstruction of the aggression faced by Palestinians.
Preceded by ABU SALMA, HIDE & SEEK, WHEN WEATHER PERMITS, AND SHATTERED MEMORY.
Featuring an evening of short films, we explore identity and meaning, from Chicago to Palestine.
After the death of his father, a young man attempts to climb Everest in a story of self-discovery.
Preceded by FROM GAZA TO CUBA and KHSARA.
Today we feature a curated series of short films that deal with the solidarity and the promise of Palestine, from a budding garden that recalls a homeland, to forgotten lessons learned from Irish Americans, to how dance preserves our identity, to being thrust into a war and documenting new memories.
Festivities begin at 6:00 p.m. with a reception.
A British-Palestinian doctor working round the clock in Gazan hospitals while enduring constant bombardment finds himself as a face of Palestinian resistance.
Preceded by SALT, SIRI MIRI, and THE DEER’S TOOTH
FREE
LYD activates imaginations of a future liberated Palestine by portraying the 5,000 year-old titular city in two ways: what it currently is, and what it could have been.
*SOLD OUT*
A Palestinian filmmaker, stranded in Norway, fights for his rights with integrity, community, and a smile for the world.
*SOLD OUT*
22 Palestinian filmmakers living through war, capture their lives in Gaza over the past year, revealing stories beyond the headlines. Their work offers a striking view of life's fragility and the resilience of love in the face of devastation.
Join us for a world premiere screening of Bisan, a Seen Palestine documentary that tells the story of one of the world’s most courageous journalists, Bisan Owda from Gaza.
This film is SOLD OUT.
Join Us for Palestine Cinema Days in Chicago at Haymarket House.
On the somber anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, observed on November 2nd, and in an effort to amplify Palestinian voices, we are screening Aida Returns directed by Carol Mansour.
Aida Returns is a poignant, sometimes sad, sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, often absurd story of a multiple journey: the journey of loss as the director’s mother Aida struggled with losing herself to Alzheimer’s disease, but finding solace in her repeated “returning” to the Yafa and Palestine of her youth; the journey of the loss of a parent; and the ultimate return journey back to Yafa where Aida would finally find rest and be herself once more.
While millions of birds migrate freely in the skies, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, yearns for the ancestral homeland she is denied. The homing instincts of the birds highlight the unresolved problems of the region, and this story adopts a birds’ eye perspective to reflect on freedom of movement, exile and the hope of return.
A Palestinian school teacher struggles to reconcile his commitment to political resistance with his emotional support for a student and the possibility of a romantic relationship with a volunteer worker.
