It is crucial to challenge the world’s misrepresentation of all the occupied, displaced, abused, and violated people of this world. It is also crucial to remind ourselves of how long we have been here, how long we have been resisting, how long we will continue to stand, bear witness, remember, struggle, and scream together.

I am not entirely sure how to write this introduction while genocide is taking place in Gaza, while the violent attacks continue and increase in the West Bank, and while the Palestinians living in 1948 Palestine are violently silenced. As the number of dead and displaced have and continue to exceed those of the 1948 Nakba. As we, in exile, stare in grief at our screens, watching this ethnic cleansing unfold, trying to continue to pave forward in solidarity, in action. While the rest of the world argues about the meaning behind bearing witness to horror.

I grew up completely imbued in cinema. My childhood was spent learning most of my life lessons, ethics, morals, thoughts, ideas, and histories from cinema. I went to my first demonstration for Palestine as a newborn in my father’s arms, his eye glued to a lens. I first set foot on my land when I was 7 years old. Yet, I truly met my homeland through cinema. I first met my people through the screen. Now, as soon as I am on my soil, surrounded by my friends, family, peers, and people, I forget the films, I get lost in the everyday life. Far and ashamed, I am reminded of the works and artists who first taught me home.

These films and filmmakers blazed a trail for me from my youth into my adult life and today. They’ve guided me when I am most lost, and when I am least appeased. These filmmakers have set the tone for the art I consume, for the thoughts I have while I watch works and for the stories I wish to hear and share.

I’ve been so deeply disappointed by the international spaces I have come to navigate, live, and work in and the way they choose to be silent. In sharing these films, I want to firstly remind you to do your part and that secondly, we are a people of multiples, of power, of thought, of strength, of laughter, of anger, of catastrophe and of continued existence. Art and Cinema show you what they see. I don’t believe there is a better way to know a people’s voice, story and pain. So look through these works like you are looking through the eyes of Palestinians. And if anything, let these works show you what true, honest, communal, beautiful, and sacred generational humanity and dignity looks like.

Let the fig tree whose roots were torn out show you it never left, let the men’s laugher show you that stolen time cannot break them. Let what was and what’s to come be a reminder that you too have the bravery to remember. And hear us when we say we are not going anywhere but home, we will rebuild everything that is destroyed, and our land and its people will be free, ya Falasteen.

Nada El-Omari
Filmmaker and writer

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