The Fifth Annual Jerusalem Arab Film Festival (JAFF): The Camera Remains Alive

The Jerusalem Arab Film Festival (JAFF), set for June, was delayed due to the unstable political environment and the ensuing war between Israel and Iran. But the production team was not deterred: on July 9, 2025, they managed to open the event, despite all odds.

Not only did the event launch successfully at the Palestinian National Theatre, El-Hakawati, in Jerusalem, but various prominent figures participated. The list of participants included high-level representation from the European Union and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as well as prominent figures from consulates, embassies, and institutes including Spain, Italy, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Mexico. Distinguished Palestinian Jerusalemites, including from civil society organizations and professors, artists, students, and enthusiasts, also attended the festival opening.

This film festival, now in its fifth year, began as a modest endeavor in 2020—a cultural initiative born from collective effort (see The First-Ever Jerusalem Arab Film Festival (JAFF) Connects East Jerusalem with the Arab World). A year later, it became the first festival in the city to present contemporary Arab films and offer a space for cinematic exchange. Since then, it has blossomed into a vibrant cinematic force, hosting a wide range of powerful Arab films and holding valuable discussions, panels, and training workshops led by film and visual production specialists.

JAFF founder and director Nevin Shaheen emphasizes the festival’s commitment to Jerusalem and its integral contribution to the city’s cultural life. The way she describes it,1 cinema is not a simple show of luxury and privilege, or a form of entertainment, but is rather a way of seeing life. For Palestinians in Jerusalem, who have been cut off from both the Arab world and Palestinians in the walled-off West Bank and Gaza Strip (see Closure and Access to Jerusalem), it is a call for life.

The brochure of this year’s JAFF describes, in Shaheen’s words, that—despite the silence that prevails in Jerusalem—the camera remains alive and persistent, rejecting all attempts to erase, blur, and fragment it.

Shaheen also shares how the festival has been expanding its reach and sharpening its purpose: “We dedicate a significant part of the festival’s program to social and political cinema, with a spotlight on the suffering of the people of Gaza, and we present films that reflect the stories of prisoners and the weight of memory under occupation. Cinema here becomes a space of emotional, political, and cultural resistance.”2

“I feel proud of the growth we achieved in such a short time,” shares the festival’s arts management consultant Elias Khlat, who is based in Lebanon.3 He is a producer and filmmaker, as well as the founder and director of the Tripoli Film Festival. Khlat has consulted for JAFF from the beginning, also serving as a jurist for its awards.

JAFF offers a great opportunity for a Jerusalem audience to connect with these films, he explains. Khlat describes how Palestinian cinema has gained momentum among Palestinians. “Jerusalem, however, has remained largely absent from the cinematic panorama,” he explains. “Had it not been for this film festival, initiated by Nevin Shaheen, it would have been entirely missing from the map.”

This year, JAFF offers prizes in three categories—Best Narrative Feature, Best Documentary Feature, and Best Short Film—with an impressive list of jury members from Arab countries. This year, for the first time, there will also be a financial award offered to the winning filmmakers.

These trophies, however, have special meaning because they are handed out in Jerusalem, says Khlat. For people in the Arab world who cannot access Jerusalem—a city that they may dream to visit but cannot—it is significant that these awards journey out of Jerusalem to honor artists from the Arab world.

In the festival flyer, the JAFF team shares that this fifth festival is dedicated “to all those who want to tell their own stories, a tender flower that resembles us and you.”

The festival opened on July 9 at the Palestinian National Theatre, El-Hakawati, with Passing Dreams (Drama, 2024, 85 min) by prominent Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi, who was born and raised in Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. The film features Sami, 12, from Qalandiya refugee camp who takes his uncle Kamal and his uncle’s daughter on a two-day sojourn all over Palestine to search for a missing homing pigeon, a bird that Sami believe has flown back to its home of origin. But where is “home”?

The rest of the festival offers a series of features and documentaries, including We Are Inside, by Farah Kassem; Diaries from Lebanon, by Myriam al-Hajj; The Vanishing, by Karim Moussaoui; Aicha, by Mahdi M. Al Barsaoui; The Brink of Dreams, by Ayman al-Amir; From Abdul to Leila, by Leila al-Bayati; The Village Next to Paradise, by Mo Harawe; Aisha’s Story, by Elizabeth Vibert and Chen Wang; and Madaniya, by Mohamed Subahi.

Short films are also on the schedule from diverse Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.

The closing film, screening on July 15, is Arzé (Drama Comedy, 2024, 90 min), a Lebanese comedy-drama about a family in Beirut with their backs against the wall directed by Mira Shaib in her feature directorial debut.

This time around, the film screenings are in various venues including the Palestinian National Theatre, El-Hakawati, the French Institute of Jerusalem—Chateaubriand, the Old City Hub, Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi Foundation (Palestinian Heritage Museum), Shams Book Café, and the Café Auguste Victoria located opposite the Church of the Ascension.

In addition to the film screenings, the weeklong festival offers intriguing workshops in different cities, including Bethlehem and Haifa; conversations on photography and scriptwriting; and tours. Specifically:

• A tour of Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem (July 13, 10:00 a.m.)
• A tour of the Palestinian Heritage Museum, founded by the late educator Hind al-Husseini at Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi Foundation, which explores the unique collections of artifacts of Palestinian life, including Palestinian embroidered thobe dresses, pottery, and tools (July 13, 4:30 p.m., right before the screening of the Tunisian feature Aisha’s Story [2025 Drama 62 min])
• A short narrative fiction scriptwriting workshop and writing session by filmmaker Salam Husari (July 13)
• A lecture by researcher and social anthropologist Ghadeer Najjar on how German photography and early cinema shaped visual narratives of Jerusalem (July 14)

A full schedule of festival happenings is available on the JAFF Facebook page.