London Palestine Film Festival: A powerful platform of Palestinian cultural resistance

The London Palestine Film Festival (LPFF) returns this year with an even more poignant and urgent lineup of films, coinciding with the first anniversary of the Gaza onslaught.

As horrific images and footage from the besieged, bombarded, and battered enclave continue to capture global attention, the need to explore and understand the history of the Palestinian struggle has never been more crucial.

The LPFF 2024, co-sponsored by The New Arab, emerges as a vital platform to reflect on Palestinian history with a carefully curated selection of films and on-stage productions offering an exploration of raw Palestinian realities.

The festival will run from 15 November until 29 November with 18 separate events spread across nine different London venues, including The Barbican, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), and the iconic Curzon Soho.

This powerful event gives international audiences an unfiltered and personal portrayal of life in one of the world's most contested conflicts.

Khaled Ziada, the founder and director of the London Palestine Film Festival tells The New Arab about the significance of this year's festival, which takes place against the backdrop of the most brutal war on Palestinians in recent history.

Israel's war on Gaza, which began on 7 October 2023, has killed over 42,500 people — mostly civilians, including Palestinian artists, filmmakers, and cultural figures — and has decimated much of the enclave's towns and cities, including art spaces and cultural institutions, which once fostered the creativity of Palestinian artists.

"It is not easy to find films about what's happening in Gaza now, since there is zero access to filmmakers from Gaza with the war happening, so we have decided not to screen a film in this year's opening of the film festival," Khaled tells The New Arab.

Instead, this year's LPFF will open with A Grain of Sand, a live performance by Palestinian actress Sarah Agha, relaying real-life Gaza testimonies, written and directed by Elias Matar.

"It will be a one-woman show that will carry testimonies from Gaza, which will be performed on the opening night of the festival in a monologue format and would offer more real-life stories from the ground," Khaled says, adding that this exclusively commissioned work would be the highlight of the LPFF.

The festival continues with a diverse selection of films, including award-winning feature-length titles and a compilation of short films, offering an insight into how Palestinians navigate life under decades of brutal Israeli occupation.

It will showcase new releases, such as Familiar Phantoms by Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind, A Land Unknown, a feature by Mahdi Fleifel on Palestinian refugees in Athens and No Other Land, a Berlinale Documentary Award winner on the destruction of a community by Israel's occupation.

Also showing will be the award-winning film, The Teacher, by renowned Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, a drama that follows a teacher as he attempts to protect his students from Israeli occupation, and the film We No Longer Prefer Mountains, by Palestinian filmmaker Inas Halabi, which explores the politics of the minority Druze community since 1948.

"We had incredible support from the cinemas we are working with, who were incredibly welcoming and had given us the freedom to curate the programme without questioning," Khaled adds. 

"We would have loved to bring filmmakers from Gaza but based on the current situation it was not possible," he adds, in comments that emphasise furthermore the importance of this year's LPFF as a show of Palestinian advocacy and solidarity.

The festival will also include a book launch for The Afterlife of Palestinian Images: Visual Remains and the Archive of Disappearance by Palestinian filmmaker and researcher Azza El Hassan.

The book explores the re-appropriation of photographs, film, and media equipment that have survived looting and destruction.

These objects serve as reminders of what has been lost, but through artistic engagement, they are reconfigured into new narratives that help restore a sense of cultural identity.

Azza El Hassan's work uniquely addresses how plundered cultures relate to the remnants of their archives, offering a fresh perspective on visual culture emerging from the ruins.

Another highlight of the LPFF will be its closing night, during which a multi-screening of From Ground Zero, a portmanteau of films made in Gaza over the past year.

"On the closing night, we will showcase the film From Ground Zero, a collection by some 22 filmmakers from Gaza who documented their experience of the war," Khaled says, adding that the film will be screened in three cinemas at the same time to close the festival.

This powerful film, by Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi, is made up of documentaries, fiction, animation and experimental films about the current onslaught on Gaza, the dire conditions faced by the enclave’s two-million population and their unbreakable resilience.

Through its commanding selection of films, the LPFF 2024 stands as a beacon of resistance, amplifying Palestinian voices and realities at a time when their struggle for survival is more urgent than ever.

By supporting Palestinian filmmakers and sharing their stories with the world, the festival not only preserves the narrative of a people under siege, occupation and war but also galvanises global solidarity, making it a vital force for truth, justice, and preservation of the cultural identity of a people facing genocide.

Sarah Khalil is a news editor and journalist at The New Arab. She holds an MA in Applied Linguistics focusing on journalism in translation from Arabic. She has over 12 years of experience in TV and online journalism