Screening will start at 12:00 Noon US EST; 7:00 PM Palestine Time.

80 minutes, Arabic with English subtitles. The film screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Mats Grorud.

Please click here to watch the film trailer.

Please click here to register for this event.

An animated feature film by Mats Grorud. Arabic with clear and accurate English subtitles.

Wardi, an eleven-year-old Palestinian girl, lives with her whole (extended) family in the Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon where she was born. Her beloved great-grandfather Sidi was one of the first people to settle in the camp after being chased from his home back in 1948. The day Sidi gives her the key to his old house back in Galilea, she fears he may have lost hope of someday going home. As she searches for Sidi’s lost hope around the camp, she will collect her family’s testimonies, from one generation to the next.

The film is directed by Mats Grorud, a director and animator from Norway. Grorud uses stop-motion clay animation for Wardi’s daily life and 2-D animation for the flashbacks of her family's struggles against Israeli forces.

Grorud previously directed two short films and has worked as an animator on several feature films, documentaries and music videos. During his childhood, his mother worked as a nurse in refugee camps in Lebanon. In the 1990s, Mats studied at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon while working as an English and Animation teacher in the Burj el Barjaneh refugee camp. Based on the testimonies of the refugees and his experience, he wrote the script for his first-feature film, The Tower.