September 2026 Recommendations
Even though it’s the last month of summer and the first month back to school, nothing is slowing down in the Arab cinema scene! There are man incredible films gracing the NYC screens this coming month, including a number that I’m looking forward to checking out for the first time at the New York Film Festival. Below are my personal favorites that I’d recommend you try to make it to this month.
Before I begin, I want to shout out Do You Love Me that was on last month’s recommendations list. It’s playing again this month with two more opportunities to see it. It plays on September 24th at Maison Française at Columbia University and on September 30th at Cobble Hill Cinemas. The latter screening is presented by out friends at Friendly Strangers Studios and will be raising funds for Manwasalwa, an organization providing aid for families in Lebanon. It will also be preceded by a short film entitled Breaking the Cycle.
Still from Adnan being and time (Courtesy of Marie Valentine Regan)
Adnan being and time (2026) dir. Marie Valentine Regan
This film is a luminous, unadorned portrait of the Lebanese-American poet and artist Etel Adnan. Renowned for her anti-war poetry before finding late acclaim as a painter in her eighties, Adnan remained curious and quietly radical. Filming closely with her over the last five years of her life, Marie Valentine Regan captures Adnan painting, visiting friends, and turning her attention toward mountains, trees, and the vibration beneath words. A lesson in how to live life, as Adnan put it, "not as a point, but as a volume." (Rockaway Film Festival)
This screening will be the film’s New York premiere!
Screening September 6th at Arverne Cinema Inside as part of the Rockaway Film Festival. The screening is followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Marie Valentine Regan and Sasha Frere-Jones.
Still from To a Land Unknown (Courtesy of Watermelon Pictures)
To a Land Unknown (2024) dir. Mahdi Fleifel
The debut narrative feature from Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel is an exciting and devastating portrait of Palestinian cousins who are refugees living in Athens and doing everything they can to make it to Germany to establish a new life for themselves and their families who remain in limbo in Lebanon. They exist and must hustle their way through the city’s underbelly to find the money to hire a smuggler who they can only hope will actual follow through on their deal.
This film boasts absolutely beautiful cinematography that is 100 percent worth seeing on the big screen (even though it is available to watch online and on Blu-ray).
The film will be shown alongside two shorter works also by Mahdi Fleifel - Elefsina Notre Amour (2023) and A Drowning Man (2017).
Immigrant Nation: Three from Mahdi Fleifel screens as part of the Immigrant Nation: People in Transit series at MoMA on September 8 & 9.
Still from Thiiird (Courtesy of Karim Kassem)
Thiiird (2023) dir. Karim Kassem
In a village outside of Beirut, amidst scrap metal, chickens and goats, the quiet Fouad runs a mechanic’s garage with a detached but soothing presence. His customers, both old and young, are invited to sit and drink coffee while they wait for their vehicles to be repaired. In these moments of stillness, the garage becomes a haven for people to express their growing despair amidst the economic collapse that surrounds them. No jobs. Sleepless nights. The burden of school tuition. No one is safe. As the darkness closes in, Fouad must undertake a deeply symbolic, transcendent journey through his own psyche: a search for the other side. (IFFR)
This film is Karim Kassem’s third feature, the final part of a trilogy of hybrid documentary-fiction works about Lebanon which includes the films Only the Winds (2020) and Octopus (2021). The film is quiet, pensive, observational and wholly unique. Fiona Armour notes that the film’s lead Fouad Mahouly “is a striking presence, both withered and magnetic, conveying the nuance of an inner transformation with the delicate, aching soulfulness of being.”
I’ve been wanting to showcase Kassem’s work ever since I first saw Octopus and I’m excited to get the opportunity to do so as part of the Cinema Arabiyya screening series! I hope you will join us for the screening on September 22 at Nitehawk Cinema - Prospect Park with an open mind and heart for something a little bit different. (Tickets will be on sale soon)
Still from Cinema Fouad (Courtesy of Cinema Politica)
Cinema Fouad (1993) dir. Mohamed Soueid
Cinema Fouad is a documentary on the life and ambitions of a young Syrian trans woman. The video follows her journey from soldier to cabaret dancer in an effort to raise funds for her sex-change operation. Shot in Beirut, it weaves a complex and multi-layered story of sexuality, identity and desire and paints a compelling portrait of its subject. (Cinema Politica)
This film is (obviously) an incredibly important work in the history of Arab queer cinema. Fouad is a delightful character (even if you want to slap the filmmaker on occasion for his prying questions and ignorance). The fact that she is captured in this little film and continues to live on is a wonderful thing.
Cinema Fouad will be shown alongside the films Oceania (2024) directed by Valentin Noujaïm and Sea in the Blood (2000) directed by Richard Fung as part of a program entitled “Veiled Struggles: Queerness, Colonialism, and Memory” Thissequence of films negotiating the secrecies and exposures of queer life, the precarity and interdependence of familial bonds, and how to survive loss. It is part of a large program called Valentin Noujaïm - In Relation which highlights the work of French-Lebanese-Egyptian filmmaker Valentin Noujaïm, alongside a “constellation of co-conspirators, fellow travelers and kindred spirits.”
The film will screen on September 22 at Anthology Film Archives. It will be followed by a conversation with writer and curator Adam HajYahia and Yasmina Price.
Still from Amreeka (Courtesy of Visibility Films)
Amreeka (2009) dir. Cherien Dabis
For anyone who follows the Cinema Arabiyya screening series, this recommendation should come as no surprise as I screened it this past May.
The debut feature film by New York-based Palestinian-American director Cherien Dabis, nominated for an Emmy for her work on Only Murders in the Building, tells the story of Muna Farah (Nisreen Faour), a Palestinian divorcée who wins a green card lottery and moves to rural Illinois with her teenage son, Fadi (Melkar Muallem). Anticipating a better life, mother and son arrive at the beginning of the US invasion of Iraq, and have to learn how to deal with a new land, assimilated relatives, and life as an Arab immigrant in post-9/11 America. (BAM)
This film is delightful, even when it’s sad. Overall, it’s funny, heartwarming and deeply relatable.
Amreeka will be showing on September 25th and 29th at the BAM Rose Cinemas as part of the The American Cinema Under George W. Bush series.
