Documentary: Visiting the Dead

Friday 20.9 11.00-13.00

Brainstorm auditorium, Dynamicum

Visiting the Dead  |  زيارة الموتى

Elias Halabi | 2023 | 35min | Language: Arabic/English with English subtitles

Visiting the dead is a short documentary by Elias Halabi. It follows Palestinian landowners’ land claims under the settler colonial rule, in particular the process of accessing and cultivating land confiscated for Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It focuses on the annual visits of Palestinian landowners to their lands, now located behind the separation wall near Jabal Abu Ghneim (today also known as the Har Homa settlement near Bethlehem).

The documentary touches on several themes related to contemporary processes of settler colonisation, ecological degradation, the slow erasure of indigenous connections to the land, and the politics of the future in Palestine. The documentary was made as part of the research project ‘Present-futures in/of Palestine’ (2019-2023), funded by the Research Council of Finland. The screening will be accompanied by an introduction, a panel discussion with researchers Mikko Joronen, Wassim Ghantous and Danna Masad from the Tampere University’s Palestine Research Group and Director Elias Halabi, and an open discussion on the topic.

Image: Elias Halabi