Free Online Virtual Event - Start Time is 12:00 Noon US EDT; 7:00 PM Palestine Time. The screening will be followed by Q&As and audience discussion with the film director.
Film is in Arabic with English Subtitles.
Click Here to Register for Event.
Click here to view the film trailer.
“My Love Awaits Me by the Sea” is a poetic documentary narrating the story of the director who takes a first time journey back to her homeland, Palestine. She leaves a secluded reality and follows a lover whom she has never met, Hasan, a Palestinian artist who discovers a beautiful and utopian world. Fairytale and reality are woven together to ask the question about the elusive place, and the need to believe in dreams.
Synopsis
In a land fragmented and engulfed by years of struggle, she finds her tranquil love awaiting her in a ‘home’ protected and held together by today’s Palestinians. They defy their everyday reality - far removed from their needs - by holding onto their dreams.
This film pays tribute to Hasan Hourani, a Palestinian artist who, with his imagination, rises above the Occupation. Hourani completed ‘Hasan is Everywhere’, a children’s book of illustration and poetry, just before his tragic death by drowning in the forbidden sea of Jaffa in 2003.
Throughout the film, both worlds of dream and reality provoke one another, to ask the questions of ‘How do you return to a place that only exists in your mind?’ ‘How do you keep fighting for life when you’re surrounded by so much death?’ ‘How can you continue believing in a dream when the outside world lives another reality?’ And ‘how can you own your version of the truth when history has taken it from you?’
About the Director
Having worked across the Middle East in architecture, graphic design and television documentaries, Mais Darwazah’s independent film career started by making short experimental films; It Wasn’t a Question of Olives (1’, 2001), The Human Puppet (10’, 2005), Still Waiting (3’, 2007) and Aisha’s Journey (8’, 2009). After finishing her undergraduate degree in Interior Architecture from Kingston University (UK, 1997), she received the Chevening scholarship from the British Council, completing an MA in Documentary Directing at Edinburgh College of Art (UK, 2007). Her graduation film Take Me Home (54’, 2008), was screened in more than 20 international film festivals. As part of an Arab feature documentary collective entitled Family Albums she completed The Dinner (25’, 2012), which was co- produced with ARTE France and received the Special Mention audi- ence award at Cinemed, 2012.
In 2008, Darwazah started developing My Love Awaits Me By the Sea, her first feature-length documentary, which has participated in several development workshops like the Berlinale’s Talent Campus DocStation, and received numerous regional and international funds such as the Sundance Documentary Development Fund. Her film was selected to officially screen and premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, 2013. She works and resides in Egypt.