Watch and learn: Chicago Palestine Film Festival aims to entertain, educate
Not all participating filmmakers are of Palestinian descent, but their art reclaims and champions narratives that have been defiled by those who have a Pavlovian tendency to think terrorists — not innocent civilians — when they visualize Palestinian men, women and children.
Actors Mahmoud Bakri (center) and Muhammed Abed El Rahman (right) from a scene in Farah Nabulsi’s film “The Teacher.” Nabulsi will be in town later this month for a screening of the film at the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, which kicked off Saturday and continues until May 4. This is the 23rd year the festival has been held.
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Nick Leffel didn’t know who he was for most of his life. He’s still not completely sure, although he’s been getting closer to finding out.
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Olive-complected with coarse black hair, he ruled out being 100% white like his “all-American” adoptive parents while growing up in Madison, Wisconsin. As the years went by, he also had doubts his biological mother and father had ancestral ties in Russia, where he was born.
Brown, rooted in Islam and somewhere in the Middle East, was Leffel’s best eventual multi-pronged guess. The Ukrainian Village resident nearly hit the bull’s-eye, according to the results of a DNA kit he recently took. Not only did the test determine Leffel likely has Syrian blood coursing through his veins, it also revealed part of his lineage could be traced back to Afghanistan or neighboring Tajikistan.
Filmmaker Nick Leffel
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“It’s been life-changing,” the young filmmaker said of uncovering his cultural heritage.
Leffel’s thoughts seem to permeate through the Arabic-speaking protagonist of his short film “Dakhla” when the man wonders, “Can one feel nostalgia for a land one has never known?” But Leffel said the piece, set in Guadalajara, Mexico, is more of a nod to the thousands of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa region, including his long-distant Palestinian cousins, who are currently living in Jordan.
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“Dakhla” is one of 21 films that will be featured at the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, which kicks off this weekend at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Like Leffel, not all filmmakers participating in the 15-day event are of Palestinian descent, but their art reclaims and champions narratives that have been defiled by those who have a Pavlovian tendency to think terrorists — not innocent civilians — when they visualize Palestinian men, women and children.
“It falls on us to undo the propaganda that has been spewed about us,” said Brooklyn-based Munir Atalla, who will be accepting the “Spirit of Palestine” award at the festival for his eight-minute tribute to his grandfather’s cousin, abstract painter and activist Samia Halaby.
Indiana University, where 87-year-old Halaby taught and received a master’s degree, in December abruptly canceled a planned exhibit on her artwork, citing security concerns and the Jerusalem-born Halaby’s social media posts expressing solidarity with her fellow Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The snubs against students, faculty members and alumni who have spoken out against Israel’s disproportionately brutal response to the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas attack have become commonplace on college campuses across the country. Just last week, more than 100 protesters at Columbia University in New York were arrested, and at the University of Southern California, its pro-Palestinian valedictorian Asna Tabassum was informed she would no longer be giving a commencement speech on graduation day.
The Chicago Palestine Film Festival, now in its 23rd year, has always served as antidote to those reprimands and provides larger context to Palestinian-Israeli relations in ways that higher education institutions have often failed.
Dissent over Israel’s nearly seven-month siege on Gaza — a “humanitarian hellscape,” per United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres — has helped pique interest in this year’s festival, which includes post-film discussions. But there’s also a deep yearning to salute Palestinian “joy and resilience,” said Nina Shoman-Dajani, the festival’s executive director.
Ticket sales went so fast for opening night on Saturday, organizers scheduled an encore screening for “Bye Bye Tiberias,” filmmaker Lina Soualem’s documentary on her mother, “Succession” and “Ramy” actress Hiam Abbass, and the Palestinian village she left behind. That showing had sold out, too.
Also sold out is the April 30 presentation of “The Teacher,” a movie that infuses many of the inequities British Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi witnessed during her numerous visits to the occupied West Bank.
While shooting in the Palestinian village of Burin, Israeli settlers set fire to the community’s olive trees — a form of “economic and environmental terrorism” that has incapacitated Palestinians for decades, Nabulsi said. She ended up emulating the fiery image for a crucial scene.
“That landscape of oppression, discrimination and control almost emerges as a character itself, a villain perhaps ...” Nabulsi said.
Nabulsi and her peers find the pressure to portray ongoing Palestinian sadness and oppression limiting, but they also understand that films, as a “soft power,” can sway “public opinion and policy by showcasing the human cost of conflict.”
British Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi
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When Nabulsi’s BAFTA-award winning, Oscar-nominated short film, “The Present,” started streaming on Netflix, many viewers, unsettled by the depiction of Palestinian suffering at Israeli checkpoints, educated themselves further, prompting “regret over previously not understanding the depth of the issues or the Palestinians struggle for freedom,” Nabulsi said.
There’s always more to the story as Leffel has found digging for information about his background, which is the subject of “Badistan,” the movie project he’s currently working on.
Leffel’s parents have been supportive as he keeps peeling back the layers and learning more.
It will be Leffel’s story to tell, but he hopes more people will be ready to open their hearts and listen.
Rummana Hussain is a columnist and member of the Sun-Times Editorial Board.
Las protestas contra la guerra han invadido los campus universitarios en las últimas semanas. Los estudiantes apoyan a los palestinos en los ataques de Israel contra Gaza, denuncian lo que llaman censura por parte de sus universidades y piden a las instituciones que dejen de invertir en fabricantes de armas y empresas que apoyan a Israel.
Tensions were higher Tuesday when hundreds of New York police officers raided Columbia University and City College of New York while a group of counterprotesters attacked a student encampment at UCLA.
“I remember coming out of my apartment one day and spotting Chicago cops dragging young protesters out of one section of Lincoln Park and shoving them into trucks, while nearby poet Allen Ginsberg was chanting in a circle of peaceful protesters not far away from the radical Abby Hoffman,” remembers Dan Webb, who later became a U.S. attorney.
Anti-war protests have swept college campuses in recent weeks as students support Palestinians in Israel’s attacks on Gaza, decry what they call censorship from their universities and call on institutions to divest from weapons manufacturers and companies supporting Israel.
Hundreds of University of Chicago students set up an encampment in the Main Quadrangle on Monday, joining groups on over 100 university campuses nationwide in support of Palestinians.
“Bad actors are using the cover of free speech in this moment of tension to normalize dangerous ideas that cause real harm to Jewish students and communities,” the museum said. But a member of Chicago’s Jewish Voice for Peace said the protesters are saying what Jewish institutions are “afraid to say.”
As the death toll mounts in the war in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis worsens, protesters at universities all over the U.S. are demanding that schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling the conflict.
Hundreds of protesters from the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and Roosevelt University rallied in support of people living in Gaza.
Students linked arms and formed a line against police after Northwestern leaders said the tent encampment violated university policy. By 9 p.m. protest leaders were told by university officials that arrests could begin later in the evening.
The video is the first proof of life of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was captured Oct. 7 in southern Israel. His parents have Chicago ties. Last week, his mother was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people of 2024.
A window of the Andersonville feminist bookstore displaying a Palestine flag and a sign calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war was shattered early Wednesday. Police are investigating.
The Democratic president Wednesday reached the end of a long, painful battle with Republicans to secure urgently needed replenishment of aid for Ukraine.
Chicago Reps. Delia Ramirez, Jesus ‘Chuy’ Garcia and Jonathan Jackson, all Democrats and the most pro-Palestinian members of the Illinois delegation, voted no on aid to Israel. GOP Rep. Darin LaHood split from his party to support aid to Ukraine.
Democrats are deeply focused on Wisconsin and Michigan to help bolster President Joe Biden’s re-election chances — and officials, in town for meetings hosted by the Democratic National Convention Committee, say they plan on showing voters a deep party contrast.
Rachel Goldberg was named for her extensive campaign calling for the release of her son and the other hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7. She grew up in Streeterville.
The Rev. Frederick Haynes III, pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, took over as president and CEO of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in February and had planned to run the organization from Texas.
“In the 45 years since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979, it has never been this bad,” said ADL Midwest regional director David Goldenberg. According to a new report, Illinois saw a 74% increase in antisemitic incidents in 2023.
About 20 elected officials and community organizers discussed ways the city can combat antisemitism, though attendees said it was just the start of the conversation. Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th) said the gesture was ‘hollow.’
“If you’re trying to reconstruct how people look at this institution of country music, I think it’ll take a little bit of time,” the singer-songwriter says.
Opening day of fishing on Wednesday was a delight and a chance to savor the bounty and wonders of Hennepin & Hopper lakes at Sue and Wes Dixon Waterfowl Refuge.
Noem appears to have rather enjoyed herself executing her family dog. So much so that she followed up shooting the misbehaving pup with executing a rambunctious pet goat. There’s definitely something missing from her emotional tool kit.
