By Radha Agarwal

Due to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the West Bank, Film Lab Palestine’s annual Palestine Cinema Days, traditionally held in Ramallah, has been cancelled this year. As a response, over 100 cities around the world—including Vancouver—are hosting screenings in its place.

On November 2, Vancouver organizations Vivo Media Arts Centre, Suimanga Films, and Mena Film Festival are holding a free screening of the film Stitching Palestine at Vivo Media Arts Centre (2625 Kaslo Street) at 6pm. Those who want to attend can just show up—no reservation is needed.

Since 2014, Film Lab Palestine has been imparting film literacy and filmmaking resources to Palestinian youth with the message that “it’s time to tell our own stories.” 

Apart from Vancouver, cities including Cairo, Amman, Athens, Paris, Dubai, Berlin, and Beirut are also hosting screenings.

“It's very urgent right now to draw people’s eyes towards Gaza and also to spread the narratives that are important and otherwise dismissed about Palestinians,” says Ghinwa Yassine, strategy director of MENA Film Festival, “and to urge people to understand and to educate themselves and to stand with justice.”

Films like Stitching Palestine work to humanize Palestinans, who have largely been reduced to numbers and statistics in the news. It follows the stories of 12 displaced women.

“Through their stories, from these successful women, the majority of them being artists, lawyers, activists, fighters, we get a very strong depiction of Palestinian resilience and the struggles that they had to endure,” says Yassine, “as well as with displacement, losing their land, their privileges, their citizenship, and their families.”