Queer Cinema for Palestine began as an alternative ethical space for filmmakers who pulled or refused to show their work in the Israeli government-sponsored TLVFest LGBTQ Film Festival. Over the past six years, hundreds of filmmakers have shown their solidarity in response to the boycott call from queer and trans Palestinians. As Israel continues its genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the West Bank, and across historic Palestine, we condemn this violence and stand in solidarity with Palestinians.
A short documentary film capturing the queer Palestinian voices in exile.
Nawras, a Jordanian-Palestinian queer artist, has been living in Slovakia, Bratislava for the past four years. Living within two communities and clashing cultures, she is pushed towards a third goal; to find peace and a place she can call home. Now, she is reclaiming the culture she was born into, this time, as she chooses to define it, and in doing so, creating a community which becomes her family.
This video reflects on Palestine’s history as a repeating cycle of injustice, imagining a future where the system remains unchanged and violence continues. It exposes the failure of the global system to deliver real justice, offering only symbolic solutions that do not improve daily life. Palestinians are forced to adapt to conditions below basic human dignity, kept in a state of false hope with no clear path to freedom or dignity.
UNTIL WE RETURN drifts between memory and dream, moving from the flicker of a sixth birthday on VHS to the final unknowing farewell of a vanished home. Unfolding like a passage along the Nile, through dreamlike currents of Cairo where memory and presence blur, part vision, part yearning, part possibility. Upon its waters, a fragile utopia awakens, a world where separation never came to be, where return is still within reach, and the home once lost flows back into being.
December 2, 2023. A queer protest erupts in San Francisco in solidarity with Palestine.The film situates this action within the longer history of ACT UP’s activism during the AIDS crisis. It explores glitch as a radical feminist tactic for resisting contemporary regimes of surveillance and silencing
A portrait of three young women: Luna Alyaan, a young Gaza violinist, killed by an Elbit drone; Eden Golan, a Zionist singer who represented Israel at 2024’s Eurovision in Malmo; and Greta Thunberg, who lead protests at Eurovision that year. A dark satire of Israel’s weaponization of song for hasbara (propaganda) purposes, Sorry uses humour and pop culture to create a mash-up agit-prop in support of the ongoing Eurovision boycott and the Dump Elbit campaign. (Inspired by Toronto Palestine Film Festival’s Gaza Lives tribute to artists lost in the genocide).
Stay tuned for upcoming screenings!
Huss AC (also credited as Huss Al-Chokhdar) is a filmmaker, performer, and curator working between Cairo and Glasgow. Their work explores queer memory, migration, nostalgia, and dreamlike experimental storytelling. Until We Return has been described as a “queer immigrant dreamscape” suspended between memory and longing.
Mama Ganuush is a trans Palestinian performance artist, filmmaker, organizer, and activist based between San Francisco and Lisbon. Their work blends Palestinian folk traditions, Egyptian golden-era dance, clowning, and political performance art, centering Palestinian futurism and queer liberation. They are also the founder of the HALA Collective and the JAHA Film Festival.
John Greyson was born in Nelson BC, grew up in London Ontario, and has lived in Toronto (more or less) since 1978. Instead of film or art school, he joined Toronto’s film and video production co-ops (Charles St. Video, Trinity Square Video, LIFT) and started making activist and experiemental videos, working with diverse collaborators (Colin Campbell, Richard Fung, Michael Balser, David McIntosh, Lisa Steele, Clive Robertson). He attended the Canadian Film Centre in 1990, and has taught at California Institute of the Arts (1986-89) and York University Film Department (2005-present).
His shorts, features and installations include: Fig Trees (2009, Best Documentary Teddy, Berlin FIlm Festival; Best Canadian Feature, Inside Out Festival); Proteus (2003, Best FIlm, Diversity Award, Barcelona Film Festival; Best Actor, Sithenghi Film Festival); The Law of Enclosures (2000, Best Actor Genie); Lilies (1996 – Best Film Genie, Best Film at festivals in Montreal, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, San Francisco); Un©ut (1997, Honourable Mention, Berlin Film Festival); Zero Patience (1993 – Best Canadian Film, Sudbury Film Festival); The Making of Monsters (1991 – Best Canadian Short, Toronto Film Festival, Best Short Film Teddy – Berlin Film Festival); and Urinal (1988 – Best Feature Teddy, Berlin Film Festival). He co-edited Queer Looks, a critical anthology on gay/lesbian film & video (Routledge, 1993), is the author of Urinal and Other Stories (Power Plant/Art Metropole, 1993), and has published essays and artists pieces in Alphabet City, Public, FUSE, and twelve critical anthologies. He was awarded the Toronto Arts Award for Film/Video, 2000, the Bell Canada Video Art Award in 2007, the Arts & Culture Pride Award, 2009, and the 1st annual Alanis Obomsawin Award for Commitment to Community and Resistance, Cinema Politica, 2011.
Dua Omari is a talented 28-year-old artist from Jerusalem, holding double BAs in Psychology and Contemporary Visual Arts from Birzeit University. Dua is passionate about integrating psychology with art, primarily expressing herself through video art and painting, though she is also keen to explore other artistic domains. Her work often delves into themes of the subconscious mind and oppression, reflecting her deep understanding of these subjects.
R.R. is a filmmaker, scholar, and multimedia journalist. He has worked as a journalist for international publications such as The Los Angeles Times and broadcast outlets including CNN and Al Jazeera Documentary Channel. His award-winning films have screened at international film festivals and venues such as IDFA, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.
Teodor Vladár is a Slovak filmmaker and writer currently studying at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. He has studied film in Spain and Paris and is involved in queer and pro-Palestinian activism. Ceasefire is his directorial debut. He also hosts the queer cinema podcast Nami o nás