THE STRANGER (AL GARIB)
Film Screening + Q&A with Ameer Fakher Eldin, moderated by Khaled Malas
11 November 2022
Lenfest Center for the Arts
In a small village in the occupied Golan Heights, the life of a desperate unlicensed doctor who is going through an existential crisis, takes another unlucky turn when he encounters a man wounded in the war in Syria. Overturning all community expectations in times of war and national crisis, he ventures forth to meet his newly found destiny.
Ameer Fakher Eldin is a Syrian writer and director based in Germany. He was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1991 to Syrian parents from the occupied Golan Heights. His debut film The Stranger premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival (Giornate Degli Autori), where it won the Edipo Re Award and was selected as Palestine's official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards, followed by great acclaim at 43rd Cairo International Film Festival receiving two awards: The Prize for Best Arab Film in the festival and the Shadi Abd El Salam Prize for Best Film in the International Critics Week Competition.
Khaled Malas is an architect and art historian from Damascus. He is a PhD candidate at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and teaches at NYU’s Gallatin School and at the Cooper Union. He is the principal and co-founder of Sigil, an art/design collective. Khaled’s most recent publication is “Concerning the Observation of Other Corpses” (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Dec. 2021: 395-396). A recent interview on his creative practice was published as “What we opt to do” (Art Papers, Spring 2022: 30-33). Sigil’s most recent project birdsong (2019) was commissioned by the Milan Design Triennale and was produced in collaboration with interlocutors and partners in the occupied Jawlan. Sigil’s work is currently featured in the British Museum exhibition “Artists making books: poetry to politics” (through September 2023).
Palestine Cuts 2022-23 Curators
Nadine Fattaleh is a Palestinian writer and researcher from Amman, Jordan. She previously worked on projects at the Center for Spatial Research, Studio-X Amman, and MMAG Foundation. In 2021-2, she was the OSUN Fellow in Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College. She is currently a PhD student in Media, Culture and Communications at New York University. Nadine is a member of the Palestinian Social Fund as well as the editorial collective of Science for the People Magazine.
Nasreen Abd Elal is a multidisciplinary graphic designer, illustrator, and researcher whose work centers on the intersection of graphic design and justice-oriented movement work. She works as an information designer at Visualizing Palestine. She graduated with a degree in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies from Columbia University in 2020.
Palestine Cuts is generously supported by Jeanne and Ken Levy-Church.