The films in this segment are come to us from filmmakers working or living in the United States and Canada. Spanning numerous genres, reflecting on diaspora, and thinking critically about what constitutes identities that are rooted in place, history, family, and practice, these local-ish shorts tackle intersectionality and depict various ideas about what it means embody tradition and home.

‎At an interminable party of doppelgängers, a woman must contend with the burden of embodiment. ‎‎<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/2bf39e4be5a1b7889b0a6ab9149358d4.png" width="159" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; float: left;">About the filmmakerJessica Abughattas’s debut poetry collection, Strip, won the 2020 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize selected by Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara. She is a Kundiman fellow and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Dinner Party is her first poetry film, based on her poem of the same title.

Dinner Party

At an interminable party of doppelgängers, a woman must contend with the burden of embodiment.

‎While longing for peace for his home country during an isolating pandemic, artist Samih Zreik, age 78, dedicates the exterior of his Dearborn home to Lebanon.‎‎‎‎<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/c90d94d29068c86cd06da33b807f7aae.png" width="164" style="max-width: 100%; display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; float: left;">About the filmmakerMalak Wazne-Fadlallah is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer whose work focuses on building empowerment within the Dearborn, MI community. Her work has been published in Vogue Arabia magazine, on Buzzfeed, and through many other outlets. Wazne-Fadlallah has also been nominated for three student Emmys, invited to a White House event, received a scholarship for and attended a summer film program at Northwestern University, and has served in the National Smithsonian Youth Council in 2018. Most recently, Wazne-Fadlallah received an award for Best Photographer and Best Visual Artist in Detroit from Hour Magazine.

Dearborn's "Beirut House"

Artist Samih Zreik dedicates the exterior of his Dearborn home to Lebanon.

‎Zaid, a young, Arab-American, amateur drag queen, has to confront his conservative father and grandfather, who suffers from Alzheimer's, about his identity. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/5c823fa7eaa0e72ee5bbd244eb660400.png" width="143" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; float: left;">About the filmmakerReem Jubran is a writer/director working between Palestine and Los Angeles, California in short and feature narratives. She is pursuing an M.F.A. in Directing/Writing from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television where she is directing her own short films after having worked two years as assistant director on Palestinian narrative features.​ She is inspired by women-led stories, flammable cultural taboos, and her identity as a transnational filmmaker. Her first feature in-development, “Sou-Sou '' was selected for Producer's Spotlight at the Palestine Pavilion, Cannes 2020 Marche du Film. She has a B.A. in Film Studies from UC Berkeley.

Mariam

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

‎Thirty-three-year-old Amira struggles to find her place as she navigates living between her Arab and American identities and her relationship with her culturally traditional, yet loving mother.‎‎<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/9b77b08abdfdad6c57d85fe9845ab1c8.jpg" width="193" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; float: left;">About the filmmakerAlex Muhawi-Ho is an Arab-Chinese-American writer and director currently based in New York. As a result of her multi-cultural identity, she’s passionate about highlighting communities and cultures that are typically under or misrepresented. She also seeks to explore the intersectionality of these groups and what it means to forge an identity in the midst of a multitude of values, traditions, and beliefs that both align with and contradict each other.

Ana Wa Enti

Thirty-three-year-old Amira struggles to find her place as she navigates living between her Arab and American identities and her relationship with her culturally traditional, yet loving mother.

‎Dearborn––the city with the most concentrated community of Arabs from anywhere outside of the "Middle East”––comes together to mourn the loss of over 3,000 Palestinian children killed by the apartheid state of Israel.‎‎<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/07da3e816a58f8759b68094948dd7822.png" width="164" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; float: left;">About the filmmakerMalak Wazne-Fadlallah is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer whose work focuses on building empowerment within the Dearborn, MI community. Her work has been published in Vogue Arabia magazine, on Buzzfeed, and through many other outlets. Wazne-Fadlallah has also been nominated for three student Emmys, invited to a White House event, received a scholarship for and attended a summer film program at Northwestern University, and has served in the National Smithsonian Youth Council in 2018. Most recently, Wazne-Fadlallah received an award for Best Photographer and Best Visual Artist in Detroit from Hour Magazine.

Palestine Will Be Free: A Dearborn Candlelight Vigil

A protest against settler colonialism and a poem for Palestine.

‎A phone conversation sets the diasporic table as a disembodied figure prepares Qahwah Arabi / Arabic Coffee. Here, the contradictions inherent in Google Translate’s instant camera feature are made visible through glitched mistranslations. Using these flaws as a prompt, the communication between a mother and a daughter considers ambiguity as a source of embodied knowledge. Don’t Forget the Water was created with the generous support of Manitoba Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.‎‎Festivals and Awards​​Don't Forget to Count Your Blessings, Solo exhibition at PLATFORM, Canada, 2021 ‎‎<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/3de2544f099982156e84ad3349c4dada.png" width="180" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; float: left;">About the filmmakerChristina Hajjar is a queer femme first-generation Lebanese-Canadian artist, writer, and cultural worker based on Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her practice deals with diaspora, queerness, body archives, cultural iconography, labour, and place. Learn more at https://christinahajjar.com/.

Don't Forget the Water

A phone conversation sets the diasporic table as a disembodied figure prepares Qahwah Arabi / Arabic Coffee.

Bare Bones is a story of interpreting, extending, and questioning what makes us human and what makes our environment. It is not a hazard of life, nor an accident, nor a product of the imagination, but a strange in-between. An experience of ending; an experience that cannot be attributed to anyone, because it belongs to no one person.To see your world suddenly collapse is to have to reinvent everything or surrender, to reclaim your life or end it, to reevaluate your beliefs or deny them. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/b27580b3fc208a1b693578a230a59ce0.jpg" width="187" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; float: left;">About the filmmakerMeryem Lahlou is a 25-year-old Moroccan artist who studied architecture in Paris and fiction and entertainment in Los Angeles. Her works translate the use of spatial design as a medium of storytelling to explore human anxieties. She narrates a constellation of frailties in diverse and undulating humanities.

Bare Bones

To see your world suddenly collapse is to have to reinvent everything or surrender, to reclaim your life or end it, to reevaluate your beliefs or deny them

A very local film production, The Recipe was created as part of Mizna's "Takhiel! Imagine! Bilingual Performing Arts Camp for Kids" led by Taous Khazem and Mohammed Yabdri. After the poisoning of a fashion mogul, Richard Branson, two rival restaurants are investigated by his reluctant attorney, Mouhami Malik. Created in June 2021 by three participants in Mizna's inaugural&nbsp;Takhiel, Imagine, summer film program for youth, the script was written by the three actors who play multiple characters!&nbsp; <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/6d07ed728e0cb67c59ae99fb6f1ccb32.jpg" width="301" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; float: left;">Created by Zayd Alkatout, Mazin Alkatout, Bilal El Idrissi with&nbsp;Taous&nbsp;Khazem and Mohammed Yabdri

The Recipe

A very local film production, The Recipe was created as part of Mizna's "Takhiel! Imagine! Bilingual Performing Arts Camp for Kids" led by Taous Khazem and Mohammed Yabdri.

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