20TH edition NOVEMBER 24 TO DECEMBER 2, 2023
20th edition
November 24 to December 2, 2023
Mohanad Yaqubi is a filmmaker, producer and co-founder of the Ramallah-based production house Idioms Film, one of the founders of the research and curatorial collective Subversive Films, and a founding member of the Palestine Film Institute, whose focus is the support, promotion and preservation of Palestinian cinema. Yaqubiâs first feature-length film, Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory (2016), was selected for numerous festivals, among them the Berlin, Dubai and Toronto International Film Festivals, Cinéma du réel, and the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.
Reel No 21 comes as an additional reflection on a collection of twenty films in 16mm format, safeguarded in Tokyo by the movement of Japanese solidarity with Palestine. It is an undelivered love letter, written by a Japanese activist, that was lost on its way to a Palestinian filmmaker. Fragments of the letter are found thoughout the collection and compiled into an imagined structure that reveals itself over the course of the film. The film as catalogue, the film as time machine, the film as archive: these themes Reel No 21 deals with have the feel of a montage essay; at the same time, the act of restoring these films exposes the motives, aspirations and disappearances of a generation and its strugglesâ not only in Japan but also around the world.
Director : Mohanad Yaqubi
Producer : Sami Saeed
Screenwriter : Rami Nihawi, Lisa Spilliaert, Mohanad Yaqubi
Cinematographer : Casey Asprooth Jackson
Editor : Rami Nihawi
Sound : Raf Enckels
Production Company : Idiom Films, Escauville