Past Event

SWANA Film Festival Australia

April 28, 2023 7:00 pm
Riverside Theatres, Parramatta

Screen Cultures

BRINGING SOUTHWEST ASIAN & NORTH AFRICAN CINEMA TO PARRAMATTA

The first-ever SWANA Film Festival was an epic 3-day festival showcasing over 20 films spanning across Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Armenia, and Syria!

SWANA Film Festival is a project of Arts & Cultural Exchange (ACE), supported by Screen NSW, City of Parramatta and Arab Theatre Studio.

SWANA is a decolonial term for the South West Asian & North African region.

SWANA displaces the terminologies of Middle Eastern, Near Eastern, Arab World or Islamic World that have colonial, Eurocentric, and Orientalist origins.

We use SWANA to acknowledge the diversity and complexities of our communities.

Our opening night included delicious food, an exclusive DJ set by Nelya, and the Australian premiere of the award-winning film Baghdad in My Shadow by Swiss-Iraqi filmmaker Samir.
The Saturday matinee screening included an all-Australian made lineup of SWANA films featuring Tania Raouf’s film exploring the legacy of Kurdish cinema, Cinema Beyond Borders. This session will be followed by a q&a with the filmmakers themselves sharing what it’s like to be a SWANA filmmaker in Australia!
Saturday evening, we had a selection of outstanding shorts from Syria to Morocco. Then all the way from Turkey, a love story between two women on the island of Büyükada in another Australian premiere, Ümit Ünal’s Love, Spells and All That.

Sunday matinee included award-winning director, Eliane Raheb’s Miguel’s War which follows the journey of Miguel (or Michele) looking back at his life as a gay man from Lebanon who shed his Lebanese roots for a life in Spain.
We went out with a bang on Sunday night with more outstanding shorts spanning Iraq, Egypt, the Emirates and Syria. We will end the night and the festival with a coming-of-age story filled with comedy, romance and tragedy from Egypt, Ayten Amin’s Souad.

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SWANA Film Festival is a project of Arts & Cultural Exchange (ACE), supported by Screen NSW, City of Parramatta and Arab Theatre Studio

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