What makes a film political? How do context, risk, relationship to nation, funding and institution shape the stories that are told and who tells them? Filmmakers and collaborators from this year’s festival programme discuss the inextricability of politics from the creation, form, lives and afterlives of film and film cultures, and what is lost in insisting in the possibility that film stays out of politics.
Speakers include Basma al-Sharif, Saeed Taji Farouky and Sanaz Sohrabi.
Palestinian artist/filmmaker Basma al-Sharif explores cyclical political histories and conflicts. In films and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works. Al-Sharif received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007, was a resident of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in 2009, the Pavillon Neuflize OBC at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014-15. She received a Jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial in 2009, was awarded a Visual Arts of the Fundación Botín in 2010, Mophradat’s Consortium Commissions in 2018, she was a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme for 2022-2023 and was nominated for the Prix Aware for 2024. In 2025 al-Sharif published her first monograph titled “Semi-Nomadic-Debt-Ridden-Bedouins” and her film “Morgenkreis (Morning Circle)” won the Grand Prize at the 39th Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, the Best Documentary short at the Sharjah Film Paltform 8, and ARTWORKS Best FilmAward at the 14th Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival.
Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian-Egyptian artist, filmmaker, and activist who has been making work around themes of liberation, resistance, and anti-colonialism since 2005. He is a radical film educator, regularly teaching, leading workshops, and lecturing about militant cinema and alternative forms of cinematic storytelling, and lead tutor of the Radical Film School, a free film course for people from marginalised backgrounds dedicated to political, collective filmmaking.
Sanaz Sohrabi (1988, Tehran) is a researcher of visual culture and artist-filmmaker based in Montréal, working on visual histories of resource sovereignty and post-colonial ecologies from the Global South. Her films and installations have been shown and awarded in various festivals and biennials including, Berlinale, IFFR, Ljubljana Biennial (2023), and Museum of Contemporary Art Montréal (MAC). Her first documentary feature “An Incomplete Calendar” (2026) premiered at Cinema du Réel.
This event is available with the OCDF Bundle at Rich Mix: 6 events for £30.