Films

Index / Activities / Films / Film and colloquium: “Farha,” with Darin Sallam

Film and colloquium: “Farha,” with Darin Sallam

From May 12, 2023 until May 25, 20237:00 p.m.

MADRID

Casa Árabe Auditorium (at Calle Alcalá, 62). 7:00 p.m. 5 euros: general tickets at the box office.

4 euros: Tickets purchased online, the officially unemployed, Casa Árabe Language Center students and Youth Card holders, by showing the proper documentation. You may only receive one discount. Sales in advance at www.casaarabe.es up to the day of the screening at 12:00 p.m. Those tickets not sold online will be made available for purchase on the day of the screening at Casa Árabe’s headquarters, as of one hour before each screening (payment in cash or by debit/credit card). Assigned seats with tickets.

The film will be shown in the original language with subtitles in Spanish. The colloquium will be held in Spanish and English, with simultaneous translation in the auditorium.

On Thursday, May 25, we will be hosting a new film screening in Madrid, as part of “The Film of the Month.” This time around, we will be showing the feature film “Farha,” inspired by the Nakba of Palestine. It is a work by Darin Sallam, who will be attending the colloquium after the film is shown. Tickets now being sold online.

Inspired by real-life events, Farha tells the story of the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe,” from the vantage point of a Palestinian teenager who locks herself in a shed for hours in order to escape the violence that has broken out in the streets. At a historic moment when thousands of Arabs were expelled from their land by the State of Israel, the conflict has lasted to the present day.

1948. Farha is a teenager living in a Palestinian village. Inseparable from her best friend Farida, she dreams about being able to attend school, but life in the village, and Palestine as a whole, is on the verge of change. With the United Nations agreement for partition of territory in the British Mandate of Palestine, the war between Israelis and Arabs begins. Farha’s father decides to lock her inside a small shed and promises to return. In the following days, Farha lives an experience that will change her life, forcing her to leave her childhood behind.

Darin J. Sallam is a Jordanian writer and director with Palestinian roots. She earned his MFA from the Red Sea Institute for Cinematic Arts (RSICA), which is affiliated with the University of Southern California. She has directed five award-winning short-subject films, including The Dark Outside (2012) and The Parrot. (2016). A winner of Berlinale Talent 2021, winner of the 2015 Robert Bosch Film Award and recently inducted into the Asia Pacific Screen Academy, Sallam was selected for the 2017 La Cité Internationale des Arts residency in Paris and the 2018 Film Independent Global Media Makers Fellowship in Los Angeles. She has served as a jury member at international film festivals and is a co-founder and managing partner of the Amman-based production company TaleBox.

Her first feature film, critically acclaimed, Farha (2021) premiered worldwide at the forty-sixth International Film Festival of Toronto, has won 12 awards at International film festivals to date, including best film, best director, jury prize, audience award and grand prize, and was first streamed on Netflix around the world in 2022. Farha was also chosen to be Jordan’s entry in the category of international feature film at the ninety-fifthOscar Awards Ceremony in 2023, earning the first victory in history for Jordan by receiving the award for Best Youth Film at the fifteenthedition of the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA), better known as the “Asian Oscars,” making Sallam the first Jordanian director ever to receive an APSA award.