The MENA Film Festival is back and promises to be a captivating event for film enthusiasts. Scheduled to take place from 27 January to 1 February, the festival will showcase 42 feature and short films from 25 countries in the MENA/SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region and its diaspora. This year’s selection is among the most diverse in the festival’s five-year history.
According to Arman Kazemi, the festival director, the organisers made a deliberate choice to name it “MENA Film Festival in Vancouver” instead of “Vancouver MENA Film Festival.” They aim to represent a Canadian perspective while maintaining a cosmopolitan vision. Kazemi co-founded the festival in response to the lack of Iranian and other minority representation in Vancouver film culture.
This year’s theme is the intricate relationship between bodies and their surroundings, exploring various temporal dimensions that span the past, present, and future. Sarah Trad, the festival’s director of programming, highlighted the films’ profound reflections on how bodies and minds serve as vessels for daily life. The films are divided into bundles under sub-themes that shed light on the ways systems of power seek to control natural movements through space.
Trad had initially grappled with the extensive implications of last year’s theme, “land,” but after an open call and more submissions than anticipated, she was able to link the content under the thread of body. This was relevant, especially in the context of ongoing atrocities facing these communities, such as the genocide in Palestine. The festival aims to foster empathy and politically engage with how SWANA bodies are being represented in news journals.
Trad’s vision is evident in each film, contributing to a larger portrait of SWANA culture, where bodies “carry the weight” of heritage. She hopes that audiences see the intricate ways that people in SWANA culture relate to their bodies.
