On a rainy day in early April, a group of students, scholars and community members congregated to learn about the Palestinian experience through film.
Sobhi al-Zobaidi, creator of several award-winning documentaries, introduced his work by conveying what cinema means to him: a chance “to fly, to imagine.” Since last fall (and seventy-five years after the settler-colonial establishment of Israel), he has noticed a change in the narratives around Palestine toward a greater understanding of the Palestinian experience. Renewed, global attention brought hope that Palestinian stories would no longer be silenced, that Palestinians will be able to speak the truth and be heard. For Sobhi, cinema is a way to speak this truth, to share collective memory while Palestinian geography is shrinking.
Sobhi was joined at this event by Rame Ibrahim, a current MFA student in Film Production and Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. A week prior to the public exploration of cinema's meaning amid genocide in Gaza, Rami sat down with Content Writer and Resident Member Kyla McCallum for a conversation about his work and experience as a Palestinian Canadian in filmmaking.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KM: You’ve been revisiting your undergraduate thesis project, a film called Eid. Would you like to describe Eid for readers?
RI: Yes, so Eid is about two women, one of whom is a Palestinian refugee living in Syria. She cannot visit her son’s grave because he was buried across a border, and her movement is heavily restricted. Rather than seeing her son, every year on Eid [a religious holiday in which people usually visit the graves of their loved ones], she visits an empty grave. That is, until she finally receives the necessary travel documents and is allowed to cross the border. When she reaches the grave, she finds another mother there, visiting the wrong son because she also couldn’t access her own. The film is about the Palestinian refugee experience, and it’s inspired by a short story my father wrote. My grandmother is a Palestinian refugee in Syria, and my uncle used to be a poster artist for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). On one of his trips, while in Tunisia, he was hit by an airstrike from Israel and martyred. His body was not allowed back into Syria, to be buried with family. My grandmother is not able to get a passport and cannot travel to his grave in Jordan, so she used to go to the graveyard beside her house every Eid instead. This was the main inspiration for the film. In 2019, after twenty-six years, my grandmother eventually acquired French travel documents and was finally able to travel to my uncle’s grave.
KM: As a Palestinian Canadian, your work explores an ethnic background that is tied to politics, freedom of speech and the Palestinian diaspora. As you conceptualize and carry out projects that reflect pieces of your personal experience, does the act of creation carry both an emotional burden and a sense of satisfaction?
RI: It's somewhat cathartic to make these projects, just as it would be for most people writing about something personal. I think this is why people do personal projects; it’s the best thing you’re going to make because it’s something that you truly understand. I wouldn’t be capable of making something about a topic or experience that I don’t understand. When you see the final project, you can also see how people are affected by it. You can see them feel happy about a work that represents them or speaks to them somehow. For example, I was able to show Eid to my uncles, and they were happy to see something about their brother that expresses the pain they’ve experienced. Even the people who were part of the project, the cast and crew, really related to it. They did their best on the movie because they believed in what it is and what it says. Even if a cast or crew member didn’t experience the exact same story, they could relate to the emotions and to the general experience. Although it’s very satisfying, there are some parts that are tiring. For my thesis project about intergenerational trauma, I'm doing very extensive research and learning new details in the process. Sometimes these details aren’t really something I want to know.
KM: Cinema is capable of conveying great meaning, motivating viewers to take action after the credits roll. However, in order to make any kind of difference, cinema must also be seen. In the context of critical work like Squid Game being misinterpreted or watered down by its popular audience, is entertainment a small piece of a larger goal to generate discussion regarding humanitarian values and complicity in genocide?
RI: I think it's a really hard question because it’s impossible for a movie not to convey a message in one way or another, even if it was just made for fun. For example, Killers of the Flower Moon is a great movie, and it’s one of the few movies that actually talk about Indigenous people in the US. It does have its not-so-good traits, as I don’t think it was focused on the Indigenous people as much as it should have been. However, it makes you see something you may not have seen or talked about before, and it was also entertaining. I think its entertainment was a big part of why it wasn’t taken as seriously because there were a lot of scenes that felt like they were purely for entertainment, such as when Leonardo Di Caprio’s character blew up the house. So, I don’t know, it can be confusing. Especially for me, watching that movie and knowing that Paramount—the same company that produced Killers of the Flower Moon—donated a large sum to Israel after the 7th of October. It seems contradictory to do a movie about Indigenous people, acknowledging their rights, but the company does not truly believe in that. You need to have an audience to convey a message, but not everyone agrees on watching something with an obvious message. A lot of films at film festivals are trying to say something, and they usually don’t go for distribution. They are stuck in the film festival circuit because distributors want something that can make them money.
KM: The title of your talk with Sobhi Zobaidi at Green College is “What Can Cinema Do?” After watching one of your films, what would you like the viewer to do?
RI: A lot of my films show the result of injustice. My thesis project talks about the results of political imprisonment. My previous movie, Ahmed, talks about that as well. My movie before that, Eid, talks about the results of occupation. I would like the viewer to think about the reason behind the movie. In Eid, why is she not able to visit her son's grave? Why was her son murdered in the first place? Why are they not in a place that they can call home? Why do they have to move from one place to another just to be together? I'd like to raise these questions and maybe also inspire a couple of Google searches.
KM: Do you have a research process for each of your films?
RI: Yes, especially for my latest one. I first researched intergenerational trauma from the scientific perspective; why does it happen? How can you stop it? How can you reverse the effects? Understanding the science behind this helps me start the artistic process, as I want to relate the internal psychology of a person to the way I film. A lot of times I want the camera to be in the same mindset as the character, so it really helps to start with research about the brain.
KM: As you’re currently working on a project that explores intergenerational trauma, what are some of the questions regarding perspective and storytelling that you are asking yourself? For example, how do you retain a throughline for viewers when traversing decades of human experience?
RI: That’s a really interesting question. One of my first drafts had flashbacks, so I would go back and forth in time to show intergenerational trauma, but I chose not to go that way. Instead, I included a voiceover from the father about his time in prison, and the child read a theatre play that his father had written during his time of imprisonment. The child starts to understand his father’s experience by reading the script, demonstrating intergenerational trauma without requiring two locations and two time settings. Despite the script, the child doesn’t recognize the true severity of what his father has been through. The father talks about his imprisonment like an adventure rather than a significant trauma, and the child accepts this narrative until they go to a physiotherapy appointment. When the father experiences electroshock therapy treatment during the appointment, he remembers being tortured with electricity. In seeing his father’s reaction, the child comes to terms with the long-lasting effects of his father’s imprisonment. I wanted to show that the problem here is not the father—it's what the father has been through. It’s what the governments have enforced that has caused the father to react this way in front of his son.
KM: Having grown up in Toronto, how do you retain close ties to your Palestinian identity? And as a graduate student at UBC, have any student organizations been beneficial in maintaining this tie?
RI: I grew up in a family that frequently talks about Palestine; no matter what, the news is always on. My parents did not allow us to speak English in the house—we always talked in Arabic. This is something that I’m very grateful for. Right now, at UBC, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) connects me with other Palestinians. It was a great surprise when I came here to find a student organization advocating for Palestine. They have a lot of events, such as fundraisers for people in Gaza, and they do teach-ins, which are extremely useful for holding UBC accountable. The university has a lot of Israeli connections, and SPHR reminds students of these investments. They're not the best thing. It's a university. Why are you investing in weapons? It just doesn't make sense.
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With filmmaker and documentarian Sobhi al-Zobaidi, Rame Ibrahim discussed his work in the Coach House in a lecture titled "What Can Cinema Do?", the final event in the Green College Leading Scholars Series Embodiment as Knowledge Translation (held on April 11, 2024).
Post by: Kyla McCallum, Green College Resident Member
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