PRAYER OF THE WANDERER is a short film program that explores the complex and multifaceted experiences of Arab American immigrants in their pursuit of identity within the context of living in the United States. By delving into their narratives, this event seeks to shed light on the richness and diversity of Arab American cultural heritage while confronting the challenges faced by individuals in navigating their dual identities. Through a carefully curated selection of films, we aim to foster a deeper understanding of the Arab American community's varied contributions to society while inviting audiences to contemplate the universal themes of belonging, adaptation, and self-discovery.&nbsp;Featuring works by Ahmed Ragheb &amp; Lily Ekimian, Darine Hotait, Jenna Bosco, Randa Ali, Reem Jubran, Shayma Aziz, and&nbsp;Zayn Alexandre.

Jad and Rania, a Lebanese couple living in New York City, struggle to achieve their shared dream of breaking into the acting industry due, in part, to the typecasting of Middle-Eastern actors. The combined pressures of juggling multiple day jobs and living so far from home begin to eat away at Jad, while Rania relishes the struggle. These differences are brought to light on the day that Jad proposes to Rania, and their relationship is put to a test as it becomes clear that their time abroad has left them yearning for different things. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/4da96577b50a9d1555e993cc04ad5e3b.jpg" width="164" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px;">Zayn Alexander is a Lebanese film director and actor based in New York City. Alexander’s debut short film, “Abroad”, an intimate drama that explores the life of a Lebanese immigrant couple, made its world premiere at the Oscar-qualifying Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Alexander’s second directorial effort, “Manara”, debuted during the 76th Venice Film Festival in the Giornate degli Autori section (2019 Venice Days). In 2020, Alexander was awarded the prestigious Khayrallah Art Prize for Abroad’s “deep and honest exploration of diaspora and immigration”. Most recently, Alexander was selected to participate in the '21 TIFF Filmmaker Lab taking place during the 46th Toronto International Film Festival.

English

Abroad

Jad and Rania, a Lebanese couple living in New York City, struggle to achieve their shared dream of breaking into the entertainment industry due, in part, to the typecasting of Arab actors.

Gamal, a new immigrant who works as a dishwasher at a diner, has to find a place to live after his friend kicks him out. Gamal’s coworker, Jose, encourages him to call Fritzie, a friendly regular customer who’s looking for a tenant. Fritzie's high strung daughter, Rachel, pressures Fritzie to sell her house and live with her since she is now widowed, but Fritzie refuses. Gamal goes to the local park to play soccer with Jose and his friends as Fritzie stumbles upon them and watches. After the game is over, Gamal and Fritzie begin talking and laughing, a new friendship developing between them. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/c2300e38f1bc81f967498a86c1adcf58.jpg" width="135" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px;">Jenna Mahmoud-Bosco (she/her) is filmmaker and actress from New Jersey. Her character-driven work centers women of color, marginalized communities, immigrants, and the experiences of being first generation in the USA. Her half hour comedy Lady Liberty was selected for the inaugural 2021 Black List Muslim List, a finalist for the 2020 Warner Brother’s Writer’s Workshop, as well as a second rounder of the episodic labs at Sundance, the Black List x WIF, and the Austin FF. She is a recipient of the 2021 New Jersey Council on the Art’s Individual Artist Fellowship in screenwriting. Jenna is the creator and star of New Heights Webseries, which was an official selection at NYC Webfest, Brooklyn Webfest, New Media Film Festival and the Black Woman Film Festival. She recently wrote, produced and directed a short film, Baladi (My Country), which premiered at the 2020 Big Apple Film Festival and won best short in the women filmmakers’ category. In March 2022 it won the Audience Award at Mosquers Film Festival.Jenna is currently developing a coming of age feature film and comedy pilot. Her recent acting credits include NBC’s New Amsterdam, NBC’s The Blacklist, and CBS’ Tommy. In her spare time, Jenna enjoys being with friends, taking care of her plants and making travel films.

Baladi (My Country)

Gamal, a young and lonely Egyptian Muslim immigrant, has to find a place to live when his friend kicks him out. Fritzie, a grieving Ashkenazi Jewish widow, is struggling to pay the bills on her house. When the pair meet at the park, an unlikely friendship develops that will change their lives forever.

Between Land and Sky is an experimental moving image project which involves narration, stop motion animation, performance, ritual music and manipulated video. It explores the idea of estrangement by following a sequence of nonlinear events that connect childhood trauma, and vague memories to longing for a sense of home. The connection comes through the voice of the narrator as a thread tying the multiple visual styles of the story. Between the fascination of the narrator with rhythmic gymnastics and how they can land on the ground after flipping and twisting in the air and remembering a physical trauma that happened in the dark during the time of the narrator’s early childhood, the film moves in a hazy state of mind, contemplating estrangement and exile through following the movement of feet jumping off and on the ground, wailing and the swirling of the papyrus made puppet in space surrounded by clouds. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/fda4cf038012f35f0df4cc6f52137aa7.jpg" width="241" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px;">Shayma Aziz is a New York-based multi-disciplinary artist whose work centralises and rethinks the feminine diasporic body, its representation in mythology, folk belief and its multifaceted existence in the modern world. Born in Asyut, Egypt, Aziz’s artistic approach is informed by her study of ancient Egyptian art, film and international contemporary practices. She obtained her BFA in painting from Luxor University, where she investigated representational formats in ancient Egyptian art before she moved to Cairo and actively engaged in its growing art and independent film scene for well over a decade. She moved to New York after 8 years of the Arab uprisings, where she obtained her MFA in Studio Art at the City College of New York. Aziz works on decolonising materials like oil paints and canvas in her painting work. She experiments with printmaking, stop-motion animation and video performance in expressing the diasporic body and how it lives in liminality in her multi-media and storytelling work. Her work has been exhibited widely in solo, and group shows and festivals in Cairo, Alexandria, New York, Thessaloniki, Beirut, Tunis, Amsterdam and Marseilles. Throughout her career, she received production and residency grants including City Artists Corps Grant, NYC, Al Mawred Al Thaqafi’s Production Grant, Centre d’Arte I Natura’s residency program, L’officina Marseille residency and production grant, Siwa Studios Residency, 3rd place prize at Caravan’s Global Mosaic exhibition and CCNY Provost’s Prize in Art.

Between Land and Sky

Between Land and Sky is an experimental semi-biographical animation that moves between several visual mediums including live video and stop-motion animation to tell a story of dreams lost and estrangement, while invoking ritual music and body dance gestures of the narrator’s homeland in the south of Egypt.

Two Arab-American women in New York City fall in love, argue about home and identity, engage in a chess battle, and express themselves through the power of the spoken word. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/1aba97dcc27b716ea6be60a03a1b33fb.jpg" width="195" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px;"> Darine Hotait is an Arab American writer and film director. Her work focuses on the politics of identity, Arab &amp; African diaspora, and science fiction. Named on Disney’s Launchpad 2022 list of Directors on the Rise, she has written and directed a dozen narrative short films that can be seen on Sundance Channel, The New Yorker, AMC Networks, BBC, and at Oscar-qualifying international film festivals. Her most recent short film “TALLAHASSEE” (2022) premiered at the 10th Blackstar Film Festival and was released exclusively by the New Yorker. In 2010, Darine founded Cinephilia Productions, a film production company, and incubator championing the next generation of Arab and African filmmakers and storytellers. She resides in New York City.

I Say Dust

Two Arab-American women in New York City fall in love, argue home and identity, engage in a chess battle, and express themselves through the power of the spoken word.

Ali, a young Egyptian living in self-exile in Los Angeles is visited by a memory of an old friend. Together they try to make sense of a past haunted by trauma and a present that makes no sense. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/4ba5291381021a6e0a4b45e9a4da811b.jpg" width="217" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px;"> Randa&nbsp;Ali&nbsp;is a writer and director working between Los Angeles and Cairo. Her films explore themes of alienation, defeat and the desire to connect in a continuously changing world. She is interested in telling stories of individuals through their relationship with their cities.&nbsp;

Kingdom of Strangers

On the Pacific coast of Los Angeles, Ali and Yaffa struggle to remember the Arab Mediterranean cities they have left behind.

An Egyptian living and working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reflects on his new surroundings through a series of images and observations. The resulting montage is a poignant cinematic postcard that explores the contradictory nature of the immigrant experience: at once lonely, frightening, and exhilarating. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/aebcf88af84f6ccbf61028ddd2eb2cd0.jpg"> Lily Ekimian Ragheb and Ahmed T. Ragheb are a married filmmaking duo based in Pittsburgh, PA. Lily, Russian-American, grew up between Washington, D.C., and Cairo, and Ahmed, Egyptian-Dutch-American, was born and raised in Cairo. Their work emphasizes identity, feminism, cultural dislocation and domesticity. Their short films have screened at festivals including AFMI’s Arab Film Festival and Uppsala Short Film Festival. Together they own the production company Studio Ragheb.

The Sailor

An Egyptian living and working in Pittsburgh reflects on his new surroundings through a series of images and observations.

Zaid, a young Arab-American amateur drag queen, has to confront his conservative father and ailing grandfather about his identity. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/2eb899f2b6b501172b852ccfec099794.jpg" width="228" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px;"> Reem Jubran is a Palestinian-American director and writer. She is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Directing/Writing from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Her debut short narrative film Mariam (2021) premiered at Outfest Fusion Film Festival. Her first feature in-development, Sou-Sou, was selected for the Producer's Highlight Program at the Palestine Pavilion the Cannes 2020 Marche du Film. She received several awards for her short films and work including the HFPA Award, Jim Morrison Film Fund, Gilbert Cates Scholarship, and the Jack Shaheen Scholarship. She has a B.A. in Film Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mariam

Zaid, a young Arab-American amateur drag queen, has to confront his conservative father and ailing grandfather about his identity.

Filmmakers Jenna Bosco and Shayma Aziz in Conversation with Haytham Saqr&nbsp;

Prayer of the Wanderer Q&A

Filmmakers Jenna Bosco and Shayma Aziz in Conversation with Haytham Saqr

Prayer of the Wanderer

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