2023, HD video and Animation, feature sci-fi documentary, co-directed with Rami Younis This feature-length, sci-fi documentary shares multiple pasts, presents, and futures of the city of Lyd in Palestine/Israel. From the perspective of the city herself, voiced by Palestinian actress Maisa Abd Elhadi, the viewer is taken on a journey through the lifespan of a five-thousand-year-old city and its residents.
Lyd was once a thriving Palestinian city with a rich history. In 636AD, It was even considered the first capital of Palestine. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Lyd became an Israeli city, and in the process hundreds of Lyd’s Palestinian residents were massacred by Israeli forces and most of the city’s 50,000 Palestinian residents were sent into exile. Today, the city has a Jewish Israeli majority and a Palestinian minority and is disinvested and divided by racism and violence. For Palestinians, Lyd’s story is a painful and tragic fall from grace, which is why our film dares to ask the question: what would the city be like had the Israeli occupation of Lyd had never happened?
In the raspy voice of a diva, the city explains that the massacre and expulsion was so devastating that it fractured her reality, and now there are two Lyds –– one occupied and one free. As the film unfolds, documentary portions follow a chorus of characters through their daily lives, creating a tapestry of the Palestinian experience of this city, and the legacy of trauma that the massacre and expulsion left on Palestinian Lydians. However, LYD, also interrupts reality with dazzling animations that envision an alternate reality where the documentary’s characters live free from the trauma of the past and the violence of the present. As the film cuts between fantastical and documentary realities, it ultimately asks the viewer to consider which future could prevail for a city that has been at the center of conflict for the last century.
Made possible by: New York State Council on the Arts production grant nominated by Union Docs, Harvard Divinity School Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative Fellowship for Rami Younis, Cannes Docs Pitch 2018 nominated and sponsored by the Palestine Film Institute, Ongoing In-Kind production and post-production support from the Meerkat Media Collective, Ramallah Docs Pitch, Palestinian American Research Center Media Developments Seminar
Select screenings: Amman Film Festival, Theatrical Run at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, Middle East Now Festival, Chicago Palestine Film Festival, San Fransisco Jewish Film festival, Anthology Film archive, Seattle Film Forum, and many more ongoing…
Awards: Jury Award for Arab Feature-Length Documentary and FIPRESCI Award from the Film Critics Association at the Amman International Film Festival, Audience Choice Award for Feature Film San Diego Arab Film Festival, Best Asian Documentary Pramana Asian Film Festival, Special Mention Official Jury and Special Mention the National Film Critics Union at Sguardi Altrove International Women’s Film Festival
Reviews: Read reviews and interviews from POV Magazine, Democracy Now, Aljazeera, and many more here.
Companion research and inspiration: From the Mountain to the Sea by Salim Tamari, Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory by Fatma Kassem, I Would Have Smiled by Issam Nassar and Rasha Salti, the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe, and so much more.
