Arab Film Resource Hub
Want to watch more Arab films? Learn more about Arab cinema? Better understand Arab representation in Western media? Find support of your movie? Check out these resources to further your exploration.
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ArteEast
A NY-based arts collective specializing in Middle Eastern film programming, ArteEast has become a leading organization amplifying the arts related to the South West Asia North Africa (SWANA) region and its diaspora engaging with New York, U.S. and international audiences and arts communities.
The Friendly Strangers Studios
Creating & distributing art for good. Amongst other things, Friendly Strangers hosts a film series at Cobble Hill Cinemas which raises money for Palestinian and Lebanese families from ticket sales.
instagram.com/friendlystrangersstudios
Balady Film Club
A NYC-based collective screening films from the Arab world and fundraising for Gaza.
ANA Contemporary Arab Cinema Week
ANA Contemporary Arab Cinema is an annual film series that highlights award-winning films by today’s best Arab directors.
Infinite Beauty: Muslim and MENASA Identity Onscreen
A series highlighting MENASA (Middle East, North African, and South Asian) stories that showcase the humor, heartbreak, nuance, and insight that films from Muslim cultures have brought to cinema.
movingimage.org/series/infinite-beauty
New York Arab Festival
New York City’s first Arab and Arab American art and culture festival, celebrating the song, dance, fashion, performance, ideas, and cuisine that have made Arab heritage part of American heritage.
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Arab Film and Media Institute
The Arab Film and Media Institute (AFMI) is a non profit organization founded by the team behind the largest and oldest Arab Film Festival in North America. Through film, education, mentorship, and new media, AFMI’s mission is to enhance public understanding of Arab culture and provide insight into the beauty, complexity and diversity intrinsic to the Arab world.
Arab American National Museum
The Arab American National Museum (AANM) is the first and only museum of its kind in the United States devoted to recording the Arab American experience.
Mizna
Since 1999, Mizna has promoted experimental approaches to art, literature, and film; work that questions and expands the forms and conceptual frameworks of Arab and SWANA culture.
Arab Cinema Center
The Arab Cinema Center (ACC) is a nonprofit organization that has been the Arab film industry’s primary focal point and information source in the global marketplace for the past 10 years.
Palestine Film Institute
The Palestine Film Institute (PFI) is an independent Palestinian-led non-profit organization established in 2019 by a group of Palestinian film workers to support, connect, and sustain the ecosystem of Palestinian cinema across geographies. It emerged from a shared recognition of the need for an infrastructure that strengthens collaboration, solidarity, and the collective agency of Palestinian film workers.
Dhakira Collective
independent research and archival platform that foregrounds art, cinema and music outside the western canon.
instagram.com/dhakiracollective
Queer Cinema for Palestine
An annual showcase of queer short films in support of Palestine that takes place during Pride Month, screened with hundreds of partners worldwide.
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Aflamuna Online
A free, non-profit platform for discovering free-to-watch independent Arab films, including cult favorites, contemporary works, and hidden gems from across the Arab region.
Shasha Movies
Founded in 2020, Shasha Movies is the independent streaming service for South-West Asian and North African (SWANA) cinema. A formalised space for artist film in and around the region, presenting a carefully-curated selection of exclusive films to a global audience. Shasha Movies is owned and operated completely independently, by a small team of women from SWANA. All films are available in their original language with English subtitles. Films are available to watch by all, anywhere in the world.
Watermelon+
Watermelon+ is a streaming platform dedicated to elevating bold voices from marginalized and underrepresented communities.
Solidarity Cinema
A free film archive of solidarity and struggle
Palestine Film Index
A growing list of films from and about Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation, made by Palestinians and those in solidarity with them.
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Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity By Viola Shafik
Arab Cinema was first published in 1998 and has become known as an indispensable work for scholars of film and the contemporary Middle East. The book combines both a detailed narrative history and thought-provoking analysis in order to provide a comprehensive overview of cinema in the Arab world. It has recently been updated and revised to reflect cultural shifts and new developments in cinema. Author Viola Shafik is a freelance film scholar and filmmaker. She has directed several documentaries including The Lemon Tree (1993).
Viola Shafik is also the author of Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class and Nation a book in which she examines a number of the biggest films from Egypt against the backdrop of the country’s overall socio-political development, from the emergence of the film industry in the 1930s, through the Nasser and Sadat eras, up to the era of globalization.
Arab Cinema Travels: Transnational Syria, Palestine, Dubai and Beyond By Kay Dickinson
Kay Dickinson’s Arab Cinema Travels offers a fascinating and expansive examination of Arab film culture in wider historical and geopolitical contexts. It explores the impact of travel and mobility on the nature of Arab cinema. This book is considered essential ready for students of film and media studies as well as Arabic and Middle Eastern studies. Dickinson is currently a professor at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University in Canada.
Kay Dickinson is also the author of Arab Film and Video Manifestos: Forty-Five Years of the Moving Image Amid Revolution. This book presents five key documents that have fundamentally shaken up and helped change the face of image culture in the Middle East and beyond.
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People by Jack G. Shaheen
This book, by award-winning film authority Jack Shaheen, makes the case that “Arab” has long been shorthand for “bad guy” in Hollywood, even after the industry shifted its portrayal of other minority groups. Reel Bad Arabs is a comprehensive study of over one thousand films where Shaheen documents the tendency of portraying Muslim Arabs as brutal, heartless, uncivilized people who are bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners. The book is more of an encyclopedia rather than a standard read but it features an extensive introduction explaining the history of Arab portrayal in Hollywood. A documentary by the same name was released in 2006 as an extension of the book.
Jack Shaheen is also the author of A is for Arab: Archiving Stereotypes in US Popular Culture, The TV Arab and Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11, these books continue the exploration of the representation of Arabs in Western media, expanding the focus into television programming and studying the effects of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on how Arabs are treated in entertainment.
(More books recommendations coming soon!)
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Caméra arabe (1987) dir. Férid Boughedir
Focusing on key Arab films produced in the last 20 years. Férid Boughedir traces the development of the film-makers' concern to produce more socially aware cinema. Themes include the issue of Palestinian homeland rights and the nature of Arab identity. The film-makers also share a desire to develop a strong poetic tradition.
Watch: https://vimeo.com/844554711
Introduction to the End of an Argument (1990) dir. Jayce Salloum & Elia Sulieman
This highly kinetic tableaux of uprooted sights and sounds works most earnestly to expose the racial biases concealed in familiar images. Relying on valuable snippets from feature films such as "Exodus", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Black Sunday", "Little Drummer Girl", and network news shows, the filmmakers have constructed an oddly wry narrative, mimicking the history of Mid East politics.
Watch: https://vimeo.com/72835443
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2006) dir. Sut Jhally
This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today's biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Featuring acclaimed author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs--from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding "terrorists"--along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today. Shaheen shows how the persistence of these images over time has served to naturalize prejudicial attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture, in the process reinforcing a narrow view of individual Arabs and the effects of specific US domestic and international policies on their lives. By inspiring critical thinking about the social, political, and basic human consequences of leaving these Hollywood caricatures unexamined, the film challenges viewers to recognize the urgent need for counter-narratives that do justice to the diversity and humanity of Arab people and the reality and richness of Arab history and culture.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPxak6lFd-I
Planet of the Arabs (2005) dir. J. Reem Salloum
Arab-American multimedia artist and filmmaker Jackie Reem Salloum combines footage from scores of movies and television programs to create her epic remix 'Planet of the Arabs'. Its a trailer-esque montage spectacle of Hollywood's relentless vilification and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims. Inspired by the book 'Reel Bad Arabs' by Dr. Jack Shaheen.
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A list of Arab-focused festivals, SWANA-focused festivals and other festivals that regularly host Arab films.
UNITED STATES
Arab Film Festival (San Francisco, CA)
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival (St. Louis, MO)
Arab Film Festival at the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI)
D.C. Palestine Film & Arts Festival (Washington D.C.)
Boston Palestine Film Festival (Boston, MA)
Houston Palestine Film Festival (Houston, TX)
The New York Forum of Amazigh Films (New York, NY)
Nova Frontier Film Festival (New York, NY)
NY African Film Festival (New York, NY)
Asian American Film Festival (San Francisco, CA)
DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival (Washington D.C.)
CANADA
Toronto Arab Film Festival (Toronto, ON)
Toronto Palestine Film Festival (Toronto, ON)
MENA Film Festival (Vancouver, BC)
Calgary Arab Film Festival (Calgary, AB)
Festival de Monde Arabe de Montreal (Montreal, QC)
Lebanese Film Festival in Canada (Montreal, QC)
ARAB WORLD
El Gouna Film Festival (Egypt)
Marrakech International Film Festival (Morocco)
Oran International Film Festival (Algeria)
Maskoon Fantastic Film Festival (Lebanon)
Palestine Cinema Days (Palestine)
Arab Cinema Week (United Arab Emirates)
Reel Palestine Film Festival (United Arab Emirates)
Fujifilm Short Film Festival (United Arab Emirates)
Sharjah Film Platform (United Arab Emirates)
Doha Film Festival (Qatar)
Red Sea Film Festival (Saudi Arabia)
EUROPE
Safar Film Festival (United Kingdom)
Rotterdam Arab Film Festival (Netherlands)
Zurich International Arab Film Festival (Switzerland)
Malmo Arab Film Festival (Sweden)
Al Ard Film Festival (Italy)
Amal International Euroarab Film Festival (Spain)
ALFILM Festival (Germany)
Lisbon Arab Film Festival (Portugal)
Aarhus Arab Film Festival (Denmark)
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COMING SOON
This page is under active construction and will continue to be updated.
If you have resource suggestions you would like to see included, please send us an email.
Inclusion of any organization or resource on this page is not an endorsement.