Other films from Middle Eastern and Arab countries were also featured during the multi-day festival.
Entries from Iran
Two titles made it to the festival’s screens: Bidad and Tehran, Another Gaze, offering the festival-goers a glimpse at unique Iranian cinema.
Iranian director Soheil Beiraghi’s Bidad had its world premiere at the festival, earning the Special Jury Award.
The film follows a young singer named Seti, who refuses to comply with the ban on women performing publicly in Iran. Undeterred by religious restrictions, she takes to street singing, gaining swift popularity and becoming a symbol for a new generation resisting oppression.
Bidad was produced independently, as its critical tone would have prevented it from passing Iranian censorship.
Director Beiraghi was reportedly investigated by authorities during production, and the film was only officially included in the festival after he had safely left Iran.
Another film from Iran, titled Tehran, Another Gaze, was presented in the Special Screenings segment. Ali Behrad’s debut in the festival, this vibrant, 92-minute portrait of life in Tehran and its resilient inhabitants amid political strain.
The film revisits the story of Leila and Pacha, whose initial explosive romance survives Pacha’s severe injuries, only to face a deeper, more challenging phase that leads to their eventual separation. This subtle blend of genres marks Behrad’s second feature.
Palestine through generations of resistance
All That’s Left of You, by Palestinian-American writer-director-actor Cherien Dabis, was presented in the festival's Special Screenings section.
Filled with a powerful account of endurance, the film unfolds in 1988 in the West Bank. It begins with a Palestinian teenager joining protests against Israeli soldiers. The scene freezes as his mother turns to the camera, narrating a family’s struggle from 1948, after 700,000 Palestinians were expelled by Zionist paramilitaries.
Iranian director Sepideh Farsi's documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk explores life and death in Gaza. The film features the late Palestinian photographer Fatma Hassona, interviewed remotely, as she vividly describes daily life in Gaza.
In its turn, the black-and-white film Partition (Taqsim) by anthropologist and filmmaker Diana Allan was also screened. In one hour, Lebanon, Palestine, and Canada’s co-production reconstructs Palestine through archival footage and interviews with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
Mixing colonial-era 16mm newsreels with contemporary testimonies and song, Allen's film bridges decades to amplify silenced voices of displacement in a powerful archival montage.
Arab voices
Besides Palestine, other Arab voices were also featured during the festival.
Within entries in Proxima Competition was a living autobiography, TrepaNation, by Syrian filmmaker Ammar al‑Beik, captures his residency in a refugee camp on Berlin’s outskirts in September 2014.
Filmed entirely within a single box, the documentary chronicles his daily acts of filming, resisting, and surviving exile. Shot on a phone over a decade and edited into ten years of footage, it offers a poetic, intimate search for freedom.
Promised Sky (Promis le Ciel) by Tunisian director Erige Sehiri was screened in the Horizons section. The film unfolds with three African women refugees in a Tunisian suburb, whose fragile solidarity is tested when a child shipwreck survivor enters their lives.
Presented at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, the 95-minute film—starring Franco-Senegalese actress Aïssa Maïga—elegantly navigates themes of loss, displacement, and communal responsibility, urging reflection on personal and societal roles.
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This article was first published in Al Ahram Hebdo
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