This year's Toronto Palestine Film Festival asks what art can do in a crisis

This weekend marks the 17th edition of the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF), a community-run event celebrating Palestinian cinema, art and culture. Although every year of the festival to date has brought with it political and social themes, the most recent iteration carries a different weight to years past, co-founder and creative director of TFF, Dania Majid, tells CBC Arts.

"[Last year] our campaign was centred around 'Free Palestine,'" Majid explains. "Our artwork, our T-shirts, our messaging talked about anti-Palestinian racism and censorship." But the 2023 edition of the festival wrapped just days before the events of Oct 7th, changing the context of their work dramatically. "In many ways, that festival was foreshadowing something we had no idea [of] at the time," she says.

"Seeing these atrocities unfold and trying to have a crystal ball — trying to figure out what September 2024 would look like, was very difficult," Majid continues. "It was a very difficult conversation for us, because we were not in the head space at that point. We are worried about our families. We even questioned, is this the time for art? In the middle of a genocide, is this the time?"

Following the expansion of the conflict in Gaza last year, Majid and her TPFF colleagues joined protests in Toronto and were approached by people who had just attended the festival inquiring about next year and urging the festival organizers to do it bigger and better. Majid recalls hearing this sentiment repeatedly from her community in the days and weeks that followed, but still, TPFF "grappled [with], how do we tackle this as a community festival?"

They began with Gaza Lives: Honouring Palestinian Artists & Writers, an event held in February this year (with a repeat presentation in April following community demand) that celebrated the works of Palestinian artists who lost their lives in the recent bombardment. 

"The response we got from that event was overwhelming," Majid remembers. "People were saying, 'I needed this.' [It] really filled a void they were living with, and they didn't have a place to go to express it and let it go."

This feedback, coupled with Majid and her team watching TikToks of Palestinians making videos about "gardening, how they live their daily lives and how they cook [using] the aid provisions," encouraged them that the festival should continue ahead for another year. 

"Seeing that art was still being created and Palestinian artists were still working, it really became our duty and our mandate to reconvene and commit ourselves to sharing that work and bringing that platform back to Toronto," says Majid. "A place where these filmmakers can express themselves and give our community a place to gather — where they can let the armour come down and be their authentic selves."

But that mission took its toll, she says: "It was a very hard year to program because of that emotional weight we were carrying. It wasn't just our own internal emotional weight, but we knew the community had exceptionally high expectations and very high needs from us this year."

Most of the films submitted to the festival for this year's edition were made before October 2023, creating a pointed challenge to Majid and the programming team. Although many of the entries were well crafted, TPFF had to consider whether a movie would speak to their audience in September 2024. In the end, Majid and fellow programmer Amanda Boulos chose to screen movies that reflected or resonated with the current situation and related to different aspects of Gaza, but still held a hopeful message.

Movies like From Ground Zero, a compilation of 22 short films depicting daily life in a besieged Gaza Strip, grant audiences an insight into the viewpoints of those directly affected; while the documentary Life is Beautiful details the experience of a young Palestinian filmmaker, Mohamed Jabaly, who found himself stuck in Tromsø, Norway while attending a film festival after the borders to Gaza closed during the war in 2014. 

In addition to these films set in the present-day, the festival has also programmed To My Father, a documentary that premiered at TPFF in 2009. To My Father follows a photographer in Rafah, using photographs to capture a remarkable and complex history. "We are bringing back [the] film because even after so much time has passed, it's still very relevant to where we are at now," Majid explains.

Alongside the many movies, TPFF includes art exhibitions, panel discussions and, new this year, the Sumoud Support Sessions, a series of mental health sessions and workshops to support the Arab community during this time. In partnership with Palestinian owned and led Jasmine Counseling & Psychotherapy, Majid hopes this addition will provide attendees a safe space to discuss any issues and provide them with the support tools needed.

"What I was hearing over and over again from professionals was how people felt so much anger and felt so dehumanized and not seen," says Majid. "The guilt for not looking at the horrible scenes coming out of Gaza, but then the toll those horrible scenes from Gaza were having on them. Trying to figure out [whether] to look away or not to look away, [and] then feel[ing] guilty that they even have the privilege to look away. Those sorts of thoughts combine and combine, and really impact people. It is impacting us in a way beyond [what] we could imagine." 

After last year's festival  Majid questioned the significance of the event compared to more pointed actions — perhaps their time was better spent donning the other hats her and her team wear as activists and advocates. In the end though, through building this year's festival, Majid is sure of TPFF's part in aiding their community.

"Art does have a place to play in crises," says Majid. "Meeting the needs of our community, healing our community. Creating space for them that many people feel they don't have access to and really need at this moment. This is a trauma response."

The festival runs until October 2nd at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.