US Premiere | Sunday, October 1 at 2:45pm | The Main Cinema
Post-screening Q&A with visiting filmmaker Khaled Jarrar.
About Notes on Displacement
The news is full of images of overcrowded boats and vast tent camps. But how much do we really know about what refugees are going through? Notes on Displacement follows a single family on a grueling journey, destination Germany. Their fear, disorientation, and solidarity is palpable. Nadira, an elderly Palestinian, has been a refugee since the age of twelve. She was forced to leave Palestine as a child, and now she has to leave Damascus, too. Filmmaker Khaled Jarrar receives unsettling videos and voice messages as they journey to the Greek island of Lesbos where he joins them. Jarrar has his own reasons for going through this experience—to eliminate the distance so dominant in Western media coverage. He works his way through the thronging crowds, gets lost in the night with his group, discovers how dangerous language barriers can be, and navigates the dehumanizing camps. And in a sense he—along with the viewer—becomes a true member of this family.
Director’s Bio
Khaled Jarrar (b.Jenin, Occupied Palestine, 1976) lives and works in Ramallah. Jarrar studied interior design at Palestine Polytechnic University and upon graduating, he smuggled himself to work as a carpenter in Nazareth, living as an underground “illegal” worker. In 1998, Jarrar enlisted in an intensive military training which resulted in his becoming Yasser Arafat’s personal body guard until Arafat’s death in 2004. Jarrar entered the field of photography in 2005, graduating from the International Academy of Art – Palestine, Ramallah (2011) and completing an MFA in fine art from the University of Arizona (2019).
Jarrar, a multidisciplinary artist, explores modern power struggles and their sociocultural impact on ordinary citizens through highly symbolic photographs, videos, film, and performative interventions. His State of Palestine project was featured in the 7th Berlin Biennale. Where We Lost Our Shadows, his filmic collaboration with Pulitzer prize winning composer Du Yun, was shown at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Infiltrators, Jarrar's first feature length film, a documentary about the business of Palestinian’s “illegally” crossing, won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Documentary, Jury Special Award and the Muhr Arab Documentary Special Jury Prize at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2012. Notes on Displacement, his second feature length film, premiered at the IDFA Envision Competition (2022).
Presented by Mizna
Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than twenty years, we have been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.