Films from Gaza
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The films we receive each year as submissions to the ConnectHER Film Festival are windows into the worlds of young people all around the globe. We meet their teachers and heroes, see their neighborhoods, learn about their fears and their solutions to problems facing their communities. In 2023, we received 150 films from 24 countries –6 of those films were from filmmakers in Gaza. Our ConnectHER Fellow Aya Matrabie, a past film festival winner, held filmmaking workshops last year to help train young people and encourage them to submit to the festival.
We were thrilled to receive these 6 films from aspiring filmmakers in Gaza, as we are each film, because it indicates a burgeoning interest in telling stories and making an impact. We love developing filmmakers and then turning filmmakers into activists. Some of the filmmakers even had a screening of their films this summer by the Gaza sea shore, which we thought was very cool –a growing ConnectHER community in another country.
Now, the films are a memory of a place that no longer exists in that way. We at ConnectHER have been in touch with some of the filmmakers and with Aya as best we can, but none of them are unscathed by the violence of the last two months. We wanted to share these films with you here as a window into what Gaza looked like just months ago. What the potential and hopes of these Palestinian young people were when they made their films showcasing beekeepers, women making a living by driving and a mosaic artist.
We are continuing to pray for these filmmakers, for their families, for a ceasefire and for peace.
