The Arab Women’s Film Festival in Brazil, since its first edition in 2019, has the goal of searching and amplifying the access to films directed by Arab women, living in the Arab world or in diaspora.

The curatorship, made by Brazilians Analu Bambirra and Carol Almeida, and by Egyptian Alia Ayman, aims at non-hegemonic artistic and narrative aesthetics. We direct our gaze at non-hegemonic films, narrative, documentary and experimental films, working to share to the audience this plurality of formats and aesthetics. As we propose this focus, we desire to erase the idea of “oppressed women”, as much as the presumption of the Arab world as a region without filmic culture. More than that: we aim at putting the directors at the center of the debate: their production contexts and aesthetic proposals.

For the fourth edition, in 2024, we reflect on the role of cinema in times of a hypervisible genocide of the Palestinian people. It might be redundant to highlight that this an exceptional edition of the festival, given the fact that we have never worked on curating a film program during a time of genocide. As Palestinians are being slaughtered by the Israeli occupation forces daily, what is the role of film festivals? Do they even have one?

As we oscillate between grief, despair, determination and anger, and as we watch Palestinians refuse to give up against all odds, we know we cannot remain silent. To be silent is to be complicit.

Our festival joins the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and we hope that colleagues at film festivals, art spaces and cultural institutions would do the same. Boycott works, and it is in all honesty, the least we can do as artists and cultural practitioners. For more information, follow BDS Brazil: https://linktr.ee/bdsbrasil