As part of “The Film of the Month” we showed the feature film “Farha,” inspired by the Nakba of Palestine, and we held a colloquium with its director, Darin Sallam.
Inspired by real-life events, Farha tells the story of the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe,” from the vantage point of a Palestinian teenager who locks herself in a shed for hours in order to escape the violence that
has broken out in the streets. At a historic moment when thousands of
Arabs were expelled from their land by the State of Israel, the conflict
has lasted to the present day.
1948. Farha is a teenager living in a Palestinian village. Inseparable from her best friend Farida, she dreams about being able to attend school, but life in the village, and Palestine as a whole, is on the verge of change. With the United Nations agreement for partition of territory in the British Mandate of Palestine, the war between Israelis and Arabs begins. Farha’s father decides to lock her inside a small shed and promises to return. In the following days, Farha lives an experience that will change her life,
forcing her to leave her childhood behind.
Darin J. Sallam is a Jordanian writer and director with Palestinian roots. She earned his MFA from the Red Sea Institute for Cinematic Arts (RSICA), which is affiliated with the University of Southern California. She has directed five award-winning short-subject films, including The Dark Outside (2012) and The Parrot. (2016). A winner of Berlinale Talent 2021, winner of the 2015 Robert Bosch Film Award and recently inducted into the Asia Pacific Screen Academy, Sallam was selected for the 2017 La Cité Internationale des Arts residency in Paris and the 2018 Film Independent Global Media Makers Fellowship in Los Angeles. She has served as a jury member at international film festivals and is a co-founder and managing partner of the Amman-based production company TaleBox.
Her first feature film, critically acclaimed, Farha (2021) premiered worldwide at the forty-sixth International Film Festival of Toronto, has won 12 awards at International film festivals to date, including best film,
best director, jury prize, audience award and grand prize, and was first streamed on Netflix around the world in 2022. Farha was also chosen to
be Jordan’s entry in the category of international feature film at the
ninety-fifthOscar Awards Ceremony in 2023, earning the first victory in
history for Jordan by receiving the award for Best Youth Film at the
fifteenthedition of the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA), better known
as the “Asian Oscars,” making Sallam the first Jordanian director ever
to receive an APSA award.
Further information: en.casaarabe.es/event/film-and-co…with-darin-sallam
