Rashid Masharawi
2021عيد ميلاد ليلى
Rashid Masharawi
Mohammed Bakri, Areen Omari
"At eight o'clock, it's Laila's birthday, okay?" Palestinian judge turned cab driver Abu Laila's wife reminds her husband. But on his young daughter's birthday, like any day, Abu faces a nerve-wracking shift in a Ramallah yellow cab armed only with an ex-jurist's misplaced pride, a father's loyalty, and a sticker reminding passengers that smoking and carrying AK-47s are prohibited. Rather than address politics or document holy war heroics and villainy, Laila's Birthday focuses on the toll that the unending Palestinian-Israeli conflict extracts from civilians clinging to both employment and a semblance of normal life amidst chaos and corruption, missile attacks and bursts of gunfire.
Laila's Birthday
Nagu'a
Amos Guttman
Jonathan Sagall, Ami Traub
Robi is a young Israeli who lives his grandparents and works at their store. He dreams of finding true love and becoming a movie director, both of which seem increasingly difficult. His film career stalls, until he can get financial backing and his love life seems to be in similar shape. While the urban city has places to cruise for sex, Robi struggles to find an organized gay community and a committed relationship.
Drifting
Attente
Rashid Masharawi
Areen Omari
Before leaving to settle abroad, Ahmad accepts one last job. He must audition actors for the new National Palestinian Theatre. On the road with interviewer Bissan and her cameraman Loumir, Ahmad goes in search of talent in the numerous refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Hopefully for the last time, Ahmad experiences the insurmountable difficulties of life in Palestine: harassing searches at check points and borders, barricades, constant tension. He realizes the destiny of all waiting refugees is much the same as his own. He ends up guiding the auditioning actors into dramatizing what best embodies their destiny. But with the chance to catch his plane at risk, Ahmad could see the opportunity for his long-awaited exile slip away.
Attentive
Haifa
Rashid Masharawi
Mohammed Bakri, Ahmad Abu Sal'oum
Haifa, nicknamed after the city of his love and hope, goes around and comes around in a Palestinian refugee camp. Although he is everybody's fool, there are many things that only he knows. He is closely related to the family of Abu Said, a former policeman who gains new hopes from the political developments. Oum Said, his wife, hangs her hope on the imminent release of their eldest son, Said, from jail. She tries to find him a bride to secure things for the future. Their youngest son, Siad, is cynical and rebellious. He refuses to believe things. Sabah, the 12 year old daughter is romancing the future and wants to find out what's in it for her. The different stories are interwoven into a very timely insight into the current Palestinian mind.
Haifa
حتى إشعار آخر
Rashid Masharawi
Salim Dau, Na'ila Zayaad
This drama portrays a day in the life of a Palestinian family during a curfew announced by the Israeli army in a Palestinian refugee camp on the Gaza Strip in 1993. From that point on, they must live behind closed shutters, barred from their daily lives and needs.
Curfew
Falastine Stereo
Rashid Masharawi
Mahmud Abu-Jazi, Salah Hannoun
Palestinian director Rashid Mashawari follows his widely acclaimed dark comedy Laila’s Birthday with this compelling and ironic drama about two brothers on the West Bank who, rendered homeless by an Israeli air strike, hustle odd jobs to raise enough money to emigrate to Canada.
Palestine Stereo
Arafat, mon frère
Rashid Masharawi
In November 2004, Yasser Arafat died. He had been leader of the PLO since 1969 and president of the Palestinian Authority since 1993. His younger brother, Dr Fathi Arafat, died soon after of cancer. Driven by despondency about the endless violence and the continuing uncertainty about the future of his people, the well-known Palestinian film maker Rashid Masharawi started working on a documentary 18 months earlier, in which he follows Dr Fathi Arafat and travels from Cairo to Paris, via Ramallah and Lebanon, tackling endless closed borders and roadblocks.
Arafat, My Brother