About the festival

Madrid Palestinian Film Festival is a film festival exclusively dedicated to Palestinian cinema. It is based in Madrid and is organized by the group «Handala». The Festival is intended to be annual, and its purpose is to present the history, culture and creative achievements of Palestine to the Spanish-speaking public. It follows in the footsteps of other Palestinian film festivals, such as those in Boston or London.

Our goal is to offer new perspectives from which to understand the richness of Palestinian culture, and thereby create its own vision of the Arab-Israeli conflict.  The aim is to open a space of meeting and reflection; a space for knowledge and critical dialogue regarding the situation in Palestine; and a space for reflecting on the conditions of Palestinian cinema in an ongoing colonial phase, and within a system of occupation. The purpose is not simply to show the oppression of the Palestinian people, but also to show the existence of Palestinian Arab identities and cultures through film; its heterogeneity seen from within, and from a variety of cinematographic practices, genres and stories. With this perspective, the principal purpose of the Film Festival is to promote a visual Palestine – from conceptual and experimental approaches to artistic innovation, to the cinema of realist sociopolitical resistance and social activism.

Year after year, century after century, Palestine perseveres as a land and a people. From the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, from Lebanon to Egypt, Palestine emerges as a land by its very nature rooted in the Middle East, with no chance of moving, migrating or disappearing. As a people, Palestine today is spread out among those in historical Palestine, where over five million Palestinian people (about one and half million internally displaced) continue to live, and the diaspora, whose numbers also exceed five million. Fifty centuries have elapsed since the Canaanite people settled in the region in the 31st century BC. The Palestinian land is still in its place, occupied and immobilized, but persistent, waiting to be understood, recognized, and felt by that part of the world that still despises it, condemns it. The Israeli occupation of Palestine continues year after year. And year after year, the Palestinian people resist this illegal aggression.

We bring to light real stories, giving insight into the history and richness of Palestinian culture, and through them, an understanding and the creation of a unique view on the occupation.