Film Screening at Traffic - Budrus
Budrus is an award-winning documentary by Julia Bacha. It premiered in Dubai in 2009 at the Dubai International Film Festival. It's back again in Dubai, this time, it will be screened at Traffic on 5th October.
The screening is organised by Community Cinema, a non-profit social intersection where film screenings function as a platform for social change. It brings together individuals from the community: policy makers, film makers, area experts, interested community members and the media, to engage in framing current and relevant social issues, exposing different angles, and sharing ideas to facilitate solutions.
The screening will be followed by a discussion on nonviolence, civil action and advocacy. The discussion will be moderated by Ramzi Jaber who organised TEDxRamallah in April this year.
Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women’s contingent that quickly moves to the front lines. Struggling side by side, father and daughter unleash an inspiring, yet little-known, movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today. In an action-filled documentary chronicling this movement from its infancy, Budrus shines a light on people who choose nonviolence to confront a threat.
While this film is about one Palestinian village, it tells a much bigger story about what is possible in the Middle East. Ayed succeeded in doing what many people believe to be impossible: he united feuding Palestinian political groups, including Fatah and Hamas; he brought women to the heart of the struggle by encouraging his daughter Iltezam's leadership; and welcoming hundreds of Israelis to cross into Palestinian territory for the first time and join this nonviolent effort. Many of the activists who joined the villagers of Budrus are now continuing to support nonviolence efforts in villages from Bil’in to Nabi Saleh to Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem.
Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier.
Budrus includes diverse voices-- from the Palestinian leaders of the movement and their Israeli allies to an Israeli military spokesman, Doron Spielman, and Yasmine Levy, the Israeli border police captain stationed in the village at that time. While many documentaries about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict either romanticize the notion of peace, or dwell entirely on the suffering of victims to the conflict, this film focuses on the success of a Palestinian-led nonviolent movement.
Event details
Date: Wednesday, 5th October at 7pm (free entry)
Venue: Traffic, 179 Umm Suquem Road (location map)
Phone: +971 4 347 0209