Against erasure: Inside AFAC Film Week 2026

For eight days in Beirut, films from across the Arab world came together around questions of memory, displacement, identity and the histories that risk of being forgotten. From September 6 to 13, AFAC Film Week returned to Metropolis Cinema in Beirut with nine films supported by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC). The program brought together filmmakers and stories from Sudan, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, alongside conversations, performances and discussions about independent cinema in the region.

This year's edition, curated by film critic and curator Ali Hussein Al-Adawy, was held under the theme “Excavating Beyond the Gaze”. Rather than focusing only on what appears immediately on screen, the program turned toward what lies underneath: memory, archives, overlooked histories and experiences shaped by conflict, displacement and political change. In a region where entire cities and communities have been repeatedly transformed, cinema offers one way of keeping their stories visible.

Stories beyond conflict

The nine films approach this idea from different places and perspectives. The program included Alaeddine Slim's Agora, Leila Kilani's Birdland/Indivision, Dania Reymond-Boughenou's Les Tempêtes, Muhammad Hamdy's Perfumed with Mint, Faouzi Bensaïdi's Deserts, Diana El Jeiroudi's Republic of Silence, Alex Bakri's Habibi Hussein, Mohamed Rashad's The Settlement and the collectively directed Khartoum. Together, the selection moves through personal memory, political realities, family relationships, migration, work, violence and belonging. In Khartoum, for example, five residents of Sudan's capital as they navigate their everyday lives. Production began before war erupted in Sudan in 2023, but the conflict eventually forced the filmmakers and protagonists to leave the country. Images originally filmed as part of everyday life consequently became records of a city before war radically altered it.

Republic of Silence, meanwhile, draws from filmmaker Diana El Jeiroudi's personal experiences between Syria and exile, connecting an individual's memories with the wider history of a country transformed by decades of political repression and conflict. Elsewhere, the program moves beyond direct representations of war.

The Settlement, set within an industrial community in Alexandria, follows two brothers navigating work and survival after their father's death, while other films use fiction, memory and imagined worlds to approach questions of place and belonging. The variety is important.

Arab cinema is often discussed internationally through films about conflict, displacement and political instability. AFAC Film Week does not ignore those realities, but its program creates room for filmmakers to approach them through individual experiences rather than allowing conflict to become the only story a country has to tell.

Excavating beyond the gaze

That approach sits at the center of this year's theme. “Excavating Beyond the Gaze” brings cinema together with research, archives and memory, asking what can be uncovered when filmmakers look beyond the most visible version of an event or place. This is particularly relevant across countries where histories have been interrupted by war, colonialism, authoritarianism and displacement.

News images can show a destroyed neighborhood or people fleeing a city. They document an immediate reality. Film can remain with the people inside that reality for longer, recording their relationships, routines, memories and experiences before, during and after a crisis. The distinction matters because repeated images eventually shape how places are understood.

Sudan can become synonymous with war. Syria can become synonymous with displacement. Palestine can be reduced to recurring images of destruction. The films presented during AFAC Film Week offer different points of entry into those places. They give filmmakers the space to preserve stories that do not necessarily fit within the immediate demands of news coverage or dominant political narratives. In doing so, cinema can also become a form of archive. A conversation, neighborhood, family story or ordinary routine may appear insignificant when it is filmed, yet become part of the record of a society undergoing rapid change.

Making independent Arab cinema possible

Film Week also draws attention to the conditions under which these stories are produced. Independent filmmaking requires more than having a story to tell. Financing, equipment, production, censorship, distribution and access to cinemas all affect whether a project can move from an idea to a screen. Those challenges can become particularly difficult for filmmakers working through war, political restrictions or displacement. AFAC's role therefore extends beyond presenting the finished films.

Through funding and support for cultural production across the Arab region, the organization has become part of the infrastructure allowing independent filmmakers to produce work outside traditional commercial models. The week created space to discuss those conditions directly. Filmmaker Q&As accompanied screenings, while three days of meetings, workshops and conversations were dedicated specifically to Syrian cinema. AFAC Film Week reflects how independent Arab cinema has developed during those two decades and the obstacles filmmakers continue to face.

Arab films, Arab audiences

Perhaps equally important is where these films are being shown. Independent Arab films often gain visibility through international festivals, while audiences in the countries and region from which they emerge may have fewer opportunities to see them. Bringing the films together at Metropolis gives them another context. A Sudanese film could be watched alongside work from Syria, Palestine, Egypt or North Africa, allowing audiences to encounter both shared concerns and very different experiences across the region. The conversations after screenings also allowed audiences to speak directly with filmmakers about the stories and circumstances behind their work.

That exchange makes Film Week more than a collection of screenings. It creates a space where independent Arab cinema can circulate within the region and where filmmakers, audiences and cultural workers can discuss what is being documented and what risks being lost. Cinema cannot preserve everything. It cannot rebuild a neighborhood, return someone from exile or prevent a city from changing, but it can keep pieces of those experiences from disappearing entirely.

At AFAC Film Week, those fragments come together as something larger: a record of Arab lives that extends beyond the images through which the region is most often seen.