Recurrences

The second night of Returns is a shorts programme contending with how memory and recollection shape the intertwined histories and realities of Lebanon and Palestine. From experimental film to video essays, these seven films ask what happens to a story after each retelling? What defines the event after each recurrence? In every wake is a wave going after what’s been lost.

CONTROL ANATOMY

Mahmoud Alhaj
2024 – Palestine – 17 min

The Gryphon/Griffin, both a mythological figure and a Zionist aircraft and missile system, is the entry into this study on the technological evolution of violence in service of the settler colonial project. Three generations unravel the mechanisms of domination behind the aerial surveillance and control exercised by the Zionist entity over Gaza and the Palestinian people. When constant erasure denies the preservation of memory, then what does it mean to make an archive of violence after every war?

A GIRL, GAZING: FRAGMENT #5

Fatima Joumaa
2025 – Lebanon – 6 min

A collage of scenes woven together from images and video segments taken at funeral processions in South Lebanon while the brutal Zionist war escalated in 2024. As communal mourning unfolds, a chorus (Fatima, Reem and Hadil) defies their loss of words. Lyrical and evocative, this documentary intimately positions the viewer as an active participant in grieving the human stories behind the headlines.

THE BUNKER, THE BARRACKS & THE BASE

Batoul Faour
2023 – Lebanon – 18 min

Towards the end of WWII, French and British forces fortified Lebanon’s Khiam Marjayoun valley, and its surrounding villages, with three structures at its core: a hospital bunker, an airbase, and a military barracks. After the retreat of the allies came the Zionist project, and recurring invasions and occupations would soon follow. This collective portrait analyzes how architecture and landscape inhabit the reality of geopolitics, and impact generations of life in South Lebanon.

MNEMOSYNE

Inas Halabi
2016 – Palestine – 13 min

Relatives recall their own version of the story of how the artist’s grandfather got a scar on his forehead. The scar, which is the aftermath of a bullet shot by an Israeli soldier, becomes the foundational hinge in this destabilizing grasp at family history. Was the scar on the left or right side of his forehead, and did it happen in the late 1940s, or was it yesterday? Titled after the Greek goddess of memory, this project explores taking on the role of historian when the primary source is no longer there.

LAND OF DENIED RITUALS

Ashtar Muallem
2025 – Palestine – 9 min

In this experimental movement piece, the artist reinterprets disappearing funerary rites once widely practiced by Palestinian women, from songs to dances. In reviving these endangered historical customs before the camera, remembrance transforms into a form of resistance through embodied gestures and melodies. This reclamation of collective grief brings forth an untold strand of Palestinian heritage, and gives it a physical language that speculates on time and presence.

WHEN SOLID TURNS TO DUST, OR A NOTE ON LIQUIDITY FROM PALESTINE

Samira Makki
2026 – Lebanon – 13 min

Liquidity and leaks turn concept into anti-colonial strategy in this video essay, which takes after a letter written by political prisoner and martyr Walid Daqqa in 2005. The longest-serving prisoner under Zionist captivity, Daqqa was in the high-security facility known as the Gilboa prison when he built his theory of Parallel Time. More than a decade later, six Palestinian prisoners orchestrated a historical escape from the same prison. What began as knowledge leaked from Daqqa during his imprisonment led to the formation of a new imaginary, one in which a future is possible.

A CRACK IN THE WATER FOLLOWED BY RETURN

Dima Srouji
2023–ongoing – Palestine – 2 min

Archival footage from the Nakba is superimposed onto floodwater to create a speculative homecoming. In the words of Noura Erakat: “Keep pushing, we’re breaking through the dam.”

Pay-what-you-can at the door: all proceeds will be donated to the Sameer Project. Co-presented with Regards palestiniens, with the support of the Feminist Media Studio (Concordia University) and QPIRG Concordia, as part of Regards palestiniens: Returns.