Our comedy shorts program returns for a second with a humorous look at the stories of four underdogs, in search of connection.

SWEET REFUGE courses a passionate Syrian baker as he spends his first Eid in the US attempting to sell the sweet he’s spent his lifetime perfecting: walnut baklava. As he roams the streets of Brooklyn, he bumps into a savvy Indian ladoo maker, who’s figured out how to appeal to one of New York’s health-conscious Brooklynites. Festivals &amp; awards: <img src="https://mad-distribution.film/img/points.png" style="max-width: 100%; white-space-collapse: preserve; border: 0px; vertical-align: middle;"> Jury Award for Best Asian American Student Film - Director's Guild of America<img src="https://mad-distribution.film/img/points.png" style="max-width: 100%; white-space-collapse: preserve; border: 0px; vertical-align: middle;"> Official Selection - Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival 2023 Filmmaker bio: <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/768fa0b0cb07f5ac2f408d5c172a7ce6.jpg" width="122" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px;">Maryam Mir is a writer/director currently pursuing her MFA in Film Production at NYU Tisch, where she is an Ang Lee Scholar. As a Kashmiri-Canadian born in Germany, raised in Bahrain, with Kenyan ancestry, Maryam has always found inspiration in stories that center the immigrant experience in all its joy, delight and magic. She is a UCP Thousand Miles Project Workshop Participant '22, a NYFA Canadian Women Artists’ Awardee '22 and a Gotham Marcie Bloom Fellow '23. Her latest short film, Sweet Refuge, starring Laith Nakli and Mahira Kakkar, was recently awarded a Jury Award at the Director's Guild of America Student Film Awards, an Canadian Woman Artists' Award from the New York Foundation of the Arts and a distribution grant from the Islamic Scholarship Fund.

English

Sweet Refuge

A recently resettled baklava baker encounters a savvy ladoo maker on the streets of Brooklyn.

Security agent Raed must stop pedestrians from entering the waterfront while it is being built. But as the building stifles the horizon more and more, he encounters strange things - just dreams or manifestations of his desires? Festivals &amp; Awards:<img src="https://mad-distribution.film/img/points.png" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; color: rgb(100, 100, 100); font-family: Roboto-Light; font-size: 18px;">&nbsp;Official Selection - Venice Film Festival 2023 Filmmaker bio: <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/363e0c251f2781c51d22fcbabfd34c29.jpg" width="135" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px;">Born in Beirut in 1973, Wissam Charaf has directed 7 short films including " Unforgettable memory of a friend", awarded at the Clermont-Ferrand festival 2019. His 1st fiction feature film, "Heaven sent" was selected at ACID during the Cannes Film Festival 2016. His 2nd fiction feature, "Dirty Difficult Dangerous" opens the Giornate degli Autori section at the 2022 Venice Film Festival where it won the Cineuropa Award, before being awarded at the 2023 Palm Springs Film Festival.

If the Sun Drowned Into an Ocean of Clouds

Security agent Raed must stop pedestrians from entering the waterfront while it is being built.

BAY AREA PREMIERE Grinding away at the inherited family business, Mohamed works tirelessly making sales of knock-off perfume while living as a knock-off version of his true self. Grappling with the recent loss of his father, his mother's anxious attempts to get him married and the shadow of his hidden Queer identity, Mohamed finds solace and connection in a day spent with a beautiful stranger who lives in self-acceptance and sees Mohamed for who he truly is, under the many layers of polo-sport-adjacent cologne. Festivals &amp; Awards:<img src="https://mad-distribution.film/img/points.png" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; color: rgb(100, 100, 100); font-family: Roboto-Light; font-size: 18px;">&nbsp;Official Selection - New Fest 2023<img src="https://mad-distribution.film/img/points.png" style="max-width: 100%; white-space-collapse: preserve; border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; color: rgb(100, 100, 100); font-family: Roboto-Light; font-size: 18px;">&nbsp;Official Selection - Outfest 2023<img src="https://mad-distribution.film/img/points.png" style="max-width: 100%; white-space-collapse: preserve; border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; color: rgb(100, 100, 100); font-family: Roboto-Light; font-size: 18px;"> Official Selection - ImageOut 2023 Filmmaker bio:<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/8b0e595e810696abb4ea969d87b0b2e7.jpg" width="126" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px;">Fateema is a Palestinian/ Canadian filmmaker based in Toronto. Her work explores fragmented identity, isolation and connection through a lens of grounded "oh no, should I laugh?" comedy. Fateema’s background in improv and clown greatly influences her writing/directing process as she strives to create with integrity, depth &amp; a sense of humor. Fateema is particularly passionate about writing nuanced and humanizing representations of Arabs and Muslims for the screen and creating space for marginalized voices both in front of and behind the camera. Her short film Feeling Fine was awarded Best Actor in a Short Film at the Berlin Indie Film Festival and has screened at festivals from Saskatchewan to Australia. She is currently workshopping her feature film Waves/‘Amwaj which has been developed through Cinephilia Productions writer’s workroom under acclaimed Lebanese-American filmmaker Darine Hotait and in the Women in the Directors Chair Career Advancement Module. Fateema believes in resilience and resistance through laughter and embraces comedy to explore the pains and joys of being human.

Eitr

A closeted Arab wholesale perfume seller is knocked off centre when a charming customer sees through his act.

Set in 1987, a young black Saudi man attempts to impress a girl by mimicking the music video of Crown, an iconic singer from that time. Festivals &amp; Awards:<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/52aef161ddef633d9adefbeac3c583be.png" style="max-width: 100%; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> Official selection - Fantastic Fest 2023<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/52aef161ddef633d9adefbeac3c583be.png" style="max-width: 100%; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> Official selection - Red Sea Film Festival 2022<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/52aef161ddef633d9adefbeac3c583be.png" style="max-width: 100%; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> Official selection - HollyShorts Film Festival 2023<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/52aef161ddef633d9adefbeac3c583be.png" style="max-width: 100%; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> Official selection - Palm Springs ShortsFest 2023<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/52aef161ddef633d9adefbeac3c583be.png" style="max-width: 100%; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> Nahed Nasrallah Special Jury Award - &nbsp;Aswan International Women Film Festival Filmmaker bio: Maha Al-Saati is an independent filmmaker interested in exploring women’s stories in the Arab World. She is&nbsp;an alum of the the&nbsp;TIFF Filmmaker Lab&nbsp;2020&nbsp;and&nbsp;TIFF Writers’ Studio&nbsp;2021, an honorary recipient of&nbsp;Share Her Journey&nbsp;Award 2020/2021. Her short films include: “Fear: Audibly” (2017) and “Hair: The Story of Grass” (2018), a satire about how body hair shapes beauty standards and gender, and an official selection of&nbsp;Fantastic Fest&nbsp;2018,&nbsp;Slamdance&nbsp;2019,&nbsp;&nbsp;HollyShorts&nbsp;2019, and has won her&nbsp;The Hollywood Foreign Press Association&nbsp;(HFPA) residency&nbsp;2021. Her latest short VHS Tape Replaced (2022) was an official selection of&nbsp;Palm Springs ShortFest, 24th BAFICI (Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema)&nbsp;, The&nbsp;Red Sea International Film Festival, 2022, and winner of the Nahed Nasrallah Special Jury Award at the&nbsp;Aswan International Women Film Festival&nbsp;2023. Her “Cycle of Apples” (2019) is a take on the Disney Princess fairytale gone wrong, and has screened at&nbsp;The Academy’s&nbsp;Arab Cinema Program 2019,&nbsp;Malmo&nbsp;Arab Film Festival and&nbsp;Mizna&nbsp;Arab Festival. Her feature-in-development project “Hejj to Disney” (now known as&nbsp;Pilgrim in Wonderland) was developed with the&nbsp;Red Sea Lodge and TorinoFilmLab&nbsp;2019, won a development awards from&nbsp;El-Gouna Film Festival&nbsp;2020 and&nbsp;Red Sea Fund 2022, shortlisted for funding by the Malmo Arab Film Festival 2020, and selected for the pitch at Montreal’s&nbsp;Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (FNC) Marché&nbsp;2022. Her feature-in-development “Darwin in Taif” also was a selection of the&nbsp;Red Sea Project Market 2022&nbsp;and&nbsp;Beirut Cinema Platform (BCP) 2023. She is a&nbsp;Simon Fraser University alum, and has taught a range of media and moving image related courses in both Saudi Arabia and Canada.

VHS Tape Replaced

A young man attempts to impress his crush by remaking the music video of an iconic 80's singer.

United States of America

Shorts: Dahik ضحك (Laughter)

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Welcome to the virtual portal of the 26th edition of the Arab Film Festival, North America's oldest and largest festival dedicated to Arab Cinema.  If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area make sure to browse the full program and schedule at arabfilmfestival.org, or click on FULL FESTIVAL SITE above.

North America's oldest and largest festival of Arab films. The flagship event of the Arab Film and Media Institute, the festival's mission is to present the richness of Arab culture through authentic narratives and images, providing insight into the beauty and complexity of the Arab world.

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