LONDON PALESTINE FILM FESTIVAL
NOVEMBER 13-26, 2020
BARBICAN CINEMA ON DEMAND | LPFF Vimeo On Demand
Mahdi Fleifel focus -
Three Logical Exits | 2020 | 15’
A Man Returned | 2016 | 30’
Xenos | 2013 | 13’
13 - 26 November
LPFF Vimeo on Demand
In the summer of 2019, director Mahdi Fleifel returned to Ain ElHelweh refugee camp in Lebanon to visit his friend, Reda (also the subject of Mahdi’s previous films, A Man Returned.) Not much had changed, except that now Reda has three children. During Mahdi’s stay, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets to protest a discriminatory law announced by the Lebanese government stating that all foreign workers will require permits in order to work in Lebanon. Till then, Palestinians were regarded as refugees and not ‘foreign workers’. Amind the chaos, Mahdi reflects with his friend, the sociologist, Marie Kortam, on Reda’s situation in the camp, and the different ‘exit logics’ that he has in order to find a new life him and his family.
Three Logical Exits is Mahdi’s brilliant meditation on these sociological issues. We present it here alongside Mahdi’s previous two films; A Man Returned, also with Reda at its centre; and Xenos, which visits yet another friend from Ain ElHelweh attempting his way out. All powerfully documenting the unexpected twists and turns of these men’s journeys.
Xenos (2013, 13 mins) In 2010, Abu Eyad and other young Palestinian men from the Ain ElHelweh refugee camp in Lebanon travelled with smugglers through Syria and Turkey into Greece. Like so many other migrants, they came looking for a way into Europe but found themselves trapped in a country undergoing economic, political, and social collapse.
A Man Returned (2016, 30 mins) Reda returns to the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain ElHelweh, his plans to escape having ended in failure after three years trapped in Greece. With a heroin addiction, he must face life in a camp being torn apart by internal strife and the encroachment of war from Syria. Against all odds he decides to marry his childhood sweetheart; a love story, bittersweet as the camp itself.
“There is no better medium than cinema for my message. I want to give visibility to people and stories - past and present. I want to humanise the narratives we read about, to add context, thoughts and individuality to them. I want to present them with texture, image and sound so that they are felt. In reference to Steve McQueen, I too will “not allow the dust of the past to settle.” My role as a filmmaker takes into account that fact that I come from a place where narrative is part of the war, my past is being erased, and I want to be part of the generation that brings it back to our collective memory. There is a disconnect between the understanding of the violations and atrocities occurring on a daily basis as part of an occupation, and the acceptance of this occupation on the basis that we are occupied by a so-called democracy. My hope is that my work ignites a proximity to a semblance of truth within a shared imagination.” - Filmmaker, Mahdi Fleifel