FORAGERS + 45TH PARALLEL

Foragers

Jumana Manna / Palestine / 2022 / 64 min

A rebellious, liberating and surprisingly humorous perspective on the conflict between Palestine and Israel told by Palestinians who defy Israeli laws to pick akkoub – a tasty herb that is essential to any local recipe.

‘I don’t care about the verdict. I will continue to pick akkoub and fight for my principles. I don’t give a damn about this law’. That’s how an elderly Palestinian man responds to Israeli nature patrols when they arrest him for picking his favourite herbs on some hills in Palestine. Like the other people who walk around the land gathering seeds, the old man is proud. He is not afraid of fines or jail. In her mischievous and liberatingly humorous film, CPH:DOX-winning artist Jumana Manna (‘Wild Relatives’, 2018) follows the path of special herbs from nature into Palestinian kitchens. A mischievous film about the quiet, stubborn resistance of a people.

45th Parallel

Lawrence Abu Hamdan / United Kingdom / 2022 / 15 min

Danish-Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel performs a monologue somewhere between Canada and the US in a performative essay film about borders, impunity and the absurdity of law.

A thick black line runs through a building in the borderland between Canada and the United States. The building is the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles the jurisdictions of the two countries. The line divides the library collections in two and forms the basis of the only theatre in the world, where the audience and the actors are located in two different nations. Between the bookshelves and the opera house stage, Danish-Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel tells of entanglements and crimes on the border: from arms smuggling to murder and drone attacks on innocent civilians. Jordanian artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s latest work ’45th Parallel’ is an urgent and performative reality check on permeable borders and absurd legislation.