DUBAI: Two Palestinian films that screened at the Toronto International Film Festival will make their Middle East and North Africa premieres in the international competition at the Doha Film Festival, which runs from Nov. 19-27.
“Conversation with the Sea,” directed by Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan, had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival before its North American premiere in Toronto.‘Conversation with the Sea’ is directed by Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan.
Set in Jerusalem, the family drama follows Kamal, a 60-year-old Palestinian man ordered by an Israeli court to pay a large social security debt allegedly owed by his son, Wael, who Kamal believed drowned in the Red Sea decades earlier. When he discovers the authorities have no official record of his son’s death, he follows the only remaining lead to find out what happened.
The film stars Palestinian actor Kamel El-Basha, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 2017 Venice International Film Festival for his role in “The Insult,” directed by Lebanon’s Ziad Doueiri. It is a co-production between Palestine, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with support from the Red Sea Fund and the Doha Film Institute.
“Thirteen in Gaza,” the debut fiction feature by Palestinian filmmaker Hosam Abu Dan, premiered in the Centerpiece program of the 51st Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema Award.
It is the first fiction feature shot in Gaza in 12 years and was filmed entirely in the Gaza Strip with a local Palestinian cast and crew under wartime conditions.
Set in 2025, it follows 13-year-old Raghad, whose home is destroyed in a bombing that kills members of her family. Living in an overcrowded displacement camp without her mother, she enters puberty with no privacy or access to basic sanitary care, while her father is drawn into a black-market economy run by an influential trader.
The film was produced by New Scene for Media Production with support from the Doha Film Institute and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture. Watermelon Pictures handles North American distribution.
