Filmed exclusively through the eyes of adolescent, Frontiers of Dreams and Fears reveals what it means to be born and to grow up under occupation. Living within two Palestinian refugee camps — one in Lebanon, the other in the West Bank — these young people already carry on their shoulders the weight of countless hardships. One might assume their innocence lost forever. How can one imagine a future, nurture aspirations, learn to believe in oneself and in others when growing up amid such pervasive violence? And yet, despite everything, the innocence of youth prevails here: in their ability to perceive beauty in everyday life, to forge friendships and solidarities with disarming ease, to live with candor, humor, and joy. To keep dreaming, again and again. Childhood emerges as a space of resistance, where the possibility of another world endures.

Mai Masri captures, with great sensitivity, fragments of their lives, carried by the energy and fervor of youth. By bringing these constrained existences into view, the filmmaker counters erasure with a genuine ethics of the gaze. She sees these young people, and we, in turn, see them. Cinema thus becomes an act of active remembrance, a refusal to let these lives and dreams fade into oblivion. Twenty-five years after filming, one question remains: what has become of Manar, Mona, Samar, and all the others? Are they still alive — refugees, in exile, safe? And their children… what will become of their children?

Jason Burnham
Tënk editorial manager