Western Arabs
+Filmmaker Present
+Post-Screening Q&A
Friday, 9/27
7:00 p.m.
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Western Arabs
Omar Shargawi
Documentary feature
77 mins | 2019
Denmark / Netherlands
Danish, English, and Arabic with English subtitles
US premiere
Filmmaker present
Attention: Mature Content
Western Arabs is a brutally intimate portrait that follows Omar Shargawi’s Danish Palestinian family over twelve years. Focusing on his troubled relationship with his father, Munir—who opens himself up to intense scrutiny—Omar dives deeply into the complexity of growing up in the midst of personal and residual political violence. Including archival news footage and scenes of Munir from Omar’s scripted films, the result is viscerally and visually mesmerizing.
From the director: “Western Arabs is a film about being torn between two cultures and mindsets. And about immersing myself in my family’s pain and getting to the core of the trauma and the wounded souls. My father is at the heart of it. He brought his war to his family, and this trauma is the seed for my entire being, as well as the reason why I make films. Is the trauma hereditary? Does it trickle down through the genes?”
Festivals and Awards:
Panorama Dokumente section, Berlin International Film Festival, Germany, 2019
Omar Shargawi was born in Denmark in 1974 to a Danish mother and a Palestinian father. Shargawi initially worked as a stills photographer and taught himself filmmaking. His debut feature, Go with Peace Jamil (2008), won awards at festivals including Rotterdam, Göteborg, and Transylvania. His documentary My Father from Haifa (2010) won two awards at the Dubai International Film Festival. In 2012, he received the Nordisk Film Award for extraordinary efforts in Danish Film.
