Events

Join us for a roundtable discussion with visiting filmmakers Laila Abbas, Nadia Shihab, Randa Jarrar, and Jihad Saade about craft, working across disciplines, and what it means to be making art during times of devastation. Coffee + pastries provided by Qahwah House.

This event is free to attend.

Randa Jarrar is the author of the memoir Love Is An Ex-Country, the novel A Map of Home, and the collection of stories Him, Me, Muhammad Ali. She is a filmmaker and actor who has appeared in independent films and on the A24 TV shows Ramy and #1 Happy Family USA. She is a recipient of a Creative Capital Award, an American Book Award, and others. She lives in Los Angeles.

Laila Abbas is a Palestinian filmmaker who studied cinema and TV production at Royal Holloway, University of London. She made her first short films between 2010 and 2012. In 2014, she directed her feature documentary Ice & Dust, which was screened at several festivals. Abbas has also worked as an academic, teaching cinema at various Palestinian universities, and she has served as the head programmer for Palestine Cinema Days for several years. Her film Thank You for Banking with Us (2024) is her first feature narrative film.

Nadia Shihab is a filmmaker, artist, and educator whose work emerges through processes that are relational and intergenerational. Working primarily across film and sound, her projects are shaped by an interest in feeling, form, feminist subjectivity, counternarrative, and experimentation. Her recent films include Sister Mother Lover Child, Echolocation, Amal’s Garden, and the feature-length film Jaddoland, which was awarded five festival jury awards including the Independent Spirit “Truer than Fiction” Award and was broadcast for three seasons on US public television. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in the Creative Arts, a Fulbright Scholar, and was a MacDowell Colony Fellow. Her work has screened in many festivals and galleries internationally.

Jihad Saade ​​(b. 1989) is a Lebanese filmmaker who began his journey in cinema at Notre Dame University, graduating in 2012. Starting out in cinematography, he has contributed to a range of projects, steadily developing his skills and artistic perspective. His directorial debut, a graduation film, won Best Student Film at the Barcelona International Film Festival in 2012, marking an early milestone in his career. Since then, Saade has directed and codirected numerous short films, documentaries, and multimedia campaigns.

Sponsored by: