The work of the two directors Carol Mansour & Muna Khalidi, “State of Passion”, won the award for best feature-length documentary at the twenty-first edition of the Ard Film Festival in Cagliari. The reason was that «the film offers an intimate and powerful look at the genocide in Gaza through the story of the Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sitta». By following his journey and showing his work, carried out under extreme pressure in the midst of the collapse of the health system, the film highlights both the personal struggles and the media activism of the protagonist: the directors thus manage to create a historical and artistic testimony of unpublished peoples and geographies.
The awards were assigned by the international jury on the stage of the Teatro Massimo in Cagliari. “Deferred Reclaim” Abdallah Mutan is the winner as best documentary short film: «In this powerful and evocative film», write the jurors, «the director reveals the story of many Palestinian families whose only hope is to mourn their loved ones and say their last goodbye». The short sheds light on the heartbreaking issue of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs, held in Israeli cold storage, depriving families of the right to bury their loved ones. Through a striking combination of video art and documentary, the film reimagines the anguished experience of a grieving mother, making it a unique and deeply moving portrait of this particular aspect of the Palestinian struggle. Abdullah Mutan was arrested while crossing the border into Jordan, perhaps because of the courageous work he carried out on this film.
With the motivation that "the short film deals with a complex story that unfolds in a few hours, in which an ordinary Palestinian family faces a direct threat from Israeli secret services, on a subject considered taboo in conservative Palestinian society, intensifying the conflict of the characters" the award for best fiction short film went to "Blood Like Water" by director Dima Hamdan.
Finally, the audience award went to “The Devil's Drivers” by Mohammed Abugeth, Daniel Carsen (feature documentary category); special mentions to “Vibrations From Gaza” by Rehab Nazzal (short documentary category) and “A Lullaby Unlike Any Other” by Amani Jaafer (fiction short category).
There were 88 films registered for the twenty-first edition of the Festival from all over the world, including feature films, shorts and fiction, of which 21 were selected and screened during the evenings of the festival scheduled from 25 February to 1 March 2025. The awards were assigned by the international jury composed of: Salim Abu Jabal, film critic and director, Nur Masalha, Palestinian writer, historian and academic, Linda Paganelli, artist, anthropologist and director, Alberto Diana, Sardinian director and documentary maker and Lina Bokhary, head of the Cinema Department of the Palestinian Ministry of Culture.
Al Ard Film Festival is now a consolidated event in the Cagliari cultural panorama, a point of reference for knowing and studying the themes of the Arab world: from war to denied rights, from environmental problems to migration, from the capacity for resilience to the struggle for the self-affirmation of peoples for their own identity.
"The twenty-first edition of the Festival was a cry in the silence on the massacre in the Gaza Strip," explains Fawzi Ismail, president of the Cultural Association Amicizia Sardegna Palestina ODV. "We are happy that the public responded in large numbers and with great interest, participating in all the evenings and paying great attention. This is a further incentive to continue with the organization of the festival because we consider it a special window on the issues of Palestine and the Middle East in general that, very often, do not find a voice in the mainstream."
"The conclusion of the festival leaves a sense of hope and bitterness because the turnout was truly unexpected but, at the same time, there is the bitterness of shedding light on the colonial oppression of the Palestinian people and other Arab peoples," comments Annamaria Brancato, artistic director of the event.
Al Ard Film Festival is organized by the Cultural Association Amicizia Sardegna Palestina ODV, with the financial contribution of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, the collaboration of the University of Cagliari and the Società Umanitaria – Cineteca Sarda and sponsored by the Municipality of Cagliari.
(Online Union)
