Our year-round film screenings bring audiences together to connect through Arab film.
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Event Details
April 12, 2025
2:00 PM EDT
TIFF Lightbox, 350 King Street West, Toronto, ON M5V 3X5Sometimes, the journey matters more than where it leads. Fuelled by larger-than-life dreams, best friends Doe and Muna run away from their troubled UK homes, drawn into the promise of a new life in Syria. At just 15, they find the journey deeply transformative — marked by brutal realities, rising doubts, encounters that challenge their beliefs, and a newfound sense of freedom.
Acclaimed theatre director Nadia Fall’s bold feature debut is as courageous as its protagonists; a visceral coming-of-age exploration of girlhood, religion, and the immutable power of friendship. Told through Suhayla El-Bushra’s compassionate and fearless writing, Brides humanizes its leads, capturing the lighthearted moments of their friendship among the tragic weight of their choices. Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar’s brilliant performances pull us in deep: Doe is introspective and devout with quiet struggles that unfold through kaleidoscope flashbacks, while Muna’s bold defiance powers their journey. A “Bad Girls” M.I.A. needle drop injects a sense of rebellion, an echo of their teenage innocence, clouded by the danger of their decisions.
Brides forces you out of your comfort zone, entangling questions of identity and faith. Raw, thought-provoking, and deeply humanizing, it is sure to spark ever-urgent conversations. – RONI HAREL HABER, TIFF Next Wave Committee
Content advisory: mature themes, violence, frightening scenesToronto Arab Film is a Community Partner to Next Wave Film Festival.
Screenings:
Brides
Country: United Kingdom, Italy
Director: Nadia Fall
Length: 92 mins
Synopsis: Antigone, is a 16-year-old girl who came to Canada from Algeria, as a child. While she excels at school, her two brothers have turned to crime. When one ends up in jail and is threatened with deportation, she comes up with a dangerous plan to have him released. “Antigone” is a modern adaptation of the Greek tragedy, in which a young woman with an indestructible love of family and justice takes on the authorities.
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Event Details
April 13, 2025
7:00 PM EDT
TIFF Lightbox, 350 King Street West, Toronto, ON M5V 3X5Where the Wind Comes From is a road-trip film about two childhood friends bound by something deeper than romance — an unshakable, loyal friendship. Alyssa (Eya Bellagha) dreams of escape, while Mehdi (Slim Baccar) longs to create, and a spontaneous journey to compete in an art contest offers them both a chance at something more.
Writer-director Amel Guellaty’s debut feature blends reality and imagination, using Alyssa’s fantasies and Mehdi’s art to explore grief, ambition, and the weight of expectation. Through detours, conflicts, and moments of unexpected joy, the film reveals not just the struggles of a generation, but also the power of a bond that defies definition. – SANJALI PARUTHI, TIFF Next Wave CommitteeToronto Arab Film is a Community Partner to Next Wave Film Festival.
Screenings:
Where the Wind Comes From//وين ياخذنا الريح
Country: Tunisia, France, Qatar
Director: Amel Guellaty
Length: 99 mins
Synopsis: Fearless spirit Alyssa and sensitive artist Mehdi, best friends since childhood, feel cramped in their life in the outskirts of Tunis. When Alyssa discovers an artist contest in Djerba that might be their ticket out, she pulls Mehdi into a fantastical journey across Tunisia which will put their friendship to the test. Where the Wind Comes From is a road-trip film about two childhood friends bound by something deeper than romance — an unshakable, loyal friendship.
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Event Details
April 12, 2025
11:30 AM EDT
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5S 1J5A Thousand Landscapes, A Thousand Bodies is a two-fold film program that explores the tension between the collective and the individual by looking at how landscapes and bodies interact with each other. Conceived as a diptych, these two programs bypass the difference of scale between the body and the landscape to take interest in the trajectories of contamination that puts these two entities in constant relation and negotiation.
In this first program, the landscape acts as both a witness and an active participant in the layering of memory, history, and time. It emerges as a repository for individual and collective stories. A Thousand Landscapes brings together works focused on terrains where narratives collide and unsettling experiences leave their imprint.Co-presented with Images Festival, Plant In Focus and re:assemblage collective
Screenings:
Before Seriana
Country: Algeria, Canada
Director: Samy Benammar
Length: 19 mins
Synopsis: Unveiling the Aurès region of Algeria, this film contrasts rugged mountains with a realm imagined from colonial narratives. “Mom, you brought me back to our homeland. All I know about these harsh landscapes I learned from books written by the hand that burned these mountains. I try to undo the colonial myths engraved into my memory, but the hills escape my gaze. Do you think I, too, have become the white djinn spoken of by the legends surrounding our martyrs?”
Bloom
Country: Spain
Director: Helena Girón, Samuel M. Delgado
Length: 18 mins
Synopsis: The mythical Isla de San Borondón (St. Brendan’s Isle) appears and disappears. Throughout history it has been placed near the Canary Islands on maps. The legend of the island of San Borondón became so pervasive that expeditions were organized to discover and conquer it for three hundred years. After centuries of oblivion, it has finally been found.
Le Disque De Poussière
Country: France
Director: Charline Dally
Length: 18 mins
Synopsis: Charline Dally invites viewers to investigate meteorite particles to identify crater impacts, only to discover that by merely observing this miniscule landscape, we are erasing all the evidence it contains that could tell us its story
Radius Catastrophe
Country: Lebanon
Director: Jad Youssef
Length: 39 mins
Synopsis: A semi-fictional essay film, narrated from the perspective of an alien agent sent to earth to investigate the aftermath of a complex murder event.
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Event Details
April 16, 2025
6:30 PM EDT
Carlton Cinema, 20 Carlton Street, Toronto, ON, M5B 2H5Antigone is a 16-year-old girl who came to Canada from Algeria as a child with some of her family. While she excels at school, her two brothers have turned to crime. When one ends up in jail and is threatened with deportation, she comes up with a plan to have him released, which gets her into trouble.
A modern adaptation of the Greek tragedy, in which a young woman with an indestructible love of family and justice takes on the authorities. This classic, universal struggle is primarily fought out on social media. The warm solidarity in the viral world, depicted by video-like impressions, contrasts markedly with the system’s cold rules. Antigone is a beacon of hope, who with her independent character commands respect and starts a movement in which humanity trumps fear and indifference.Co-presented with National Canadian Film Day and Reel Canada.
Screenings:
Antigone
Country: Canada
Director: Sophie Deraspe
Length: 109 mins
Synopsis: Antigone, is a 16-year-old girl who came to Canada from Algeria, as a child. While she excels at school, her two brothers have turned to crime. When one ends up in jail and is threatened with deportation, she comes up with a dangerous plan to have him released. “Antigone” is a modern adaptation of the Greek tragedy, in which a young woman with an indestructible love of family and justice takes on the authorities.
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Event Details
November 30, 2024
4:20 PM EST
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5S 1J5After fleeing a camp in Lebanon, two Palestinian cousins are stranded in Athens, living in an underground limbo. Desperately seeking a way to reach Germany, they find themselves caught in an uncontrollable spiral.
Co-presented with Muslim International Film Festival
Screenings:
To A Land Unknown
Country: Palestine, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia
Director: Mehdi Fleifel
Length: 105 mins
Synopsis: Chatila and Reda are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens. But when Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his dangerous drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in an effort to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.
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Event Details
November 30, 2024
6:20 PM EST
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5S 1J5Tragedy strikes a Syrian family in Aleppo, starting a chain reaction of events involving five different families in four different countries
Co-presented with Muslim International Film Festival
Screenings:
The Strangers’ Case
Country: Jordan
Director: Brandt Andersen
Length: 103 mins
Synopsis: Tragedy strikes a Syrian family in Aleppo, starting a chain reaction of events involving five different families in four different countries.
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Event Details
December 1, 2024
4:00 PM EST
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5S 1J5Latif Al Ani photographed Iraq for 30 years before multiple wars arose. Now he travels through his devastated country in search of the people and places he photographed at the time, sharing his pictures with Iraqis who today cannot imagine that the world in the photographs was real.
Co-presented with Muslim International Film Festival
Screenings:
“Iraq’s Invisible Beauty//جمال العراق الخفي”
Country: Belgium, France, Iraq
Director: Sahim Omar Kalifa, Jurgen Buedts
Length: 87 mins
Synopsis: Latif Al Ani photographed Iraq for 30 years before multiple wars arose. At the age of 86, he travels through his devastated country in search of the people and places he photographed at the time, sharing his pictures with Iraqis who today cannot imagine that the world in the photographs was real.
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Event Details
December 8, 2024
2:30 PM EDT
Paradise Theatre, 1006 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, M6H 1M2Directed by Halima Ouardiri, The Skates will be showing at the Paradise Theatre on Sunday, December 8th as part of the The Uncomfort Zone short films screening.
Co-presented with Breakthroughs Film Festival.
Screenings:
The Skates//Les Patins
Country: Canada
Director: Halima Ouardiri
Length: 13 mins
Synopsis: Mina loves to skate. Today, her father, recently divorced from her mother, accompanies her to her first figure skating lesson. An ordinary day if something hadn’t happened to the skates.
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Event Details
September 29, 2024
3:00 PM EDT
TIFF Lightbox 350 King St W, Toronto, Cinema 2To My Father is Abdel Salam Shehadah’s poetic and mesmerizing homage to the studio photographers of the 1950’s – 70’s. Set partly in a refugee camp in Rafah, this is a remarkable look back at fifty years of Palestinian and Arab history, through photographs, reportage and the voices of photographers. A photo here is not just a photo: it brings history to life.
The film, which premiered at the second TPFF in 2009, is a deeply personal and moving film that spotlights the talent of Gaza-born director Shahadah, who has worked all over the world as a director, cameraman and journalist, and filmmaker. Shehada has been directing and producing films and programming for over 30 years – including more than 20 documentary films, which have been nominated and won awards. Shehada also worked for NHK Japan TV.
Following the screening, TPFF is honoured to host an in-person conversation with Director Shahadah, recently exiled from Gaza, about his reflections as a filmmaker from Gaza.Co-presented with Toronto Palestine Film Festival.
Screenings:
To My Father//إلى أبي
Country: Palestine
Director: Abdel Salam Shehada
Length: 53 mins
Synopsis: “Those were days when people prettier, when eyes were filled with colour, even in black and white. What has changed – the camera, or the eye?” asks Abdel Salam Shehadah’s poetic homage to the studio photographers of the 1950’s – 70’s. Set partly in a refugee camp in Rafah, the film looks back at fifty years of Palestinian and Arab history, told through the photographs, reportage and the voices of these photographers today.
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Event Details
July 28, 2024
8:45 PM EDT
Christie Pits Park, 750 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON M6G 3K4Jafar Panahi’s Taxi uses a clever conceit to offer a window not only into the day-to-day lives of taxi drivers and other workers in Tehran, but also into the materialities of being a working filmmaker in Iran. In 2010, director Jafar Panahi was banned from making films in Iran for 20 years, for allegedly producing propaganda against the Iranian government. Rejecting the terms of the ban as censorship, Panahi began making films covertly. To make Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, Panahi disguised himself as a taxi driver and roamed the streets of Tehran, movie camera mounted firmly in place on his dashboard. Though this gives the film a documentary-style realism, the film is entirely fictional, and its use of non-professional actors, cinema verité style, and focus on social inequalities make it evocative of Italian Neorealist classic The Bicycle Thieves by way of fellow Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry. Satisfyingly self-aware and extremely charming, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi is an intimate portrait of working life in Tehran that foregrounds the humanity of those labouring in less than ideal circumstances.
The accompanying short films similarly take to the streets to explore the social inequities of work. Lisa Rideout’s One Leg In, One Leg Out follows Iman, who after a decade of working as a sex worker in Toronto makes the choice to become a social worker to help support her fellow trans community members who supported her for so long. Shot largely in Toronto’s Church-Wellesley neighbourhood, the film shows Iman as both a beloved regular at local bars and drag shows, and a tenacious self-starter eager to forge her path in a new profession. Similarly, Toronto filmmaker Mariam Zaidi’s short doc Over Time is a tender portrait of Regent Park resident Shafiq, a real-life taxi driver by night, shop clerk by day. An immigrant from Bangladesh in the ‘90s, he has seen Toronto change as Uber’s gig economy has taken over, his once stable job as a yellow-cab driver becoming increasingly precarious, and his local community squeezed by rapid gentrification. Like Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, these two documentary shorts contemplate how spaces around work are often where we form the communities necessary to survive and thriveCo-presented with Toronto Outdoor Picture Show and Toronto Queer Film Festival.
Screenings:
Jafar Panahi’s Taxi//تاکسی
Country: Iran
Director: Jafar Panahi
Length: 82 mins
Synopsis: Taxi uses a clever conceit to offer a window not only into the day-to-day lives of taxi drivers and other workers in Tehran, but also into the materialities of being a working filmmaker in Iran.
Over Time
Country: Canada
Director: Mariam Zaidi
Length: 15 mins
Synopsis: Through Shafiq, a ride-share driver and resident of Regent Park, we get a glimpse into one of the fastest changing industries and neighbourhoods in Toronto today.
One Leg In, One Leg Out
Country: Canada
Director: Lisa Rideout
Length: 15 mins
Synopsis: After a decade as a sex worker, Iman attempts to pursue her dream of becoming a social worker to help her transgender community members. As she explores the option of going back to college, One Leg In, One Leg Out questions whether tenacity, ambition and a life long dream are enough to overcome a challenging personal situation.