Ajyal Film Festival 2023

All Films

Refuge (Malja')

Ajyal Competition

Maha Essid / Short Documentary / Qatar / 2019 / 6 min / Colour / DCP
In Arabic, English / English subtitles
Interests: Documentary
N/A

Synopsis

‘Refuge’ follows two Palestinian millennials, Mohammed and Sameera, both of whom were born and raised outside of Palestine. In the film, they tell us about their connection to their homeland and the ways they try to stay close to their identity, history and culture. One such way, as they both mention, is by attaching the meaning of home, in all its wholeness, to their grandmothers and great-aunts who symbolize the resilience and power of the Palestinian people.

About the Directors

Maha Essid is a Tunisian Doha-based filmmaker who’s an international senior majoring in Media Industries and Technologies at Northwestern University in Qatar. She has worked on numerous film projects in Doha, Tunisia, and Chicago, with Studio 20Q, The Film House and independently. She directed her first fiction ‘426’ in 2017, and her first documentary ‘Refuge’ in 2018, as part of a documentary class in NU-Q. She is currently directing two more short films, ‘Sinusoid’ and ‘Al-Hudood’.

Credits

Director
Maha Essid
Producer
Wijdan Al-Khateeb
Cast
Sameera AlHaj Abed Mohammad Hawwash

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