Twin Cities Arab Film Festival: Minnesota Made - Shorts and Fragments + Discussion

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About

19th Arab Film Festival

Thursday, September 25 at 5:00 PM

Minnesota Made: Shorts and Fragments presents films from local Arab and SWANA artists working across artistic and visual media. This segment includes finished films, collaborations, and works-in-progress by image-makers from our local(ish) community.

A short discussion with the filmmakers will follow the screening.

ABOUT THE FILMSNeitherHEREnorTHERE

Dirs. Sharon Mansur and Meryl Zaytoun Murman • USA • 10 min • English
NeitherHEREnorTHERE is an experiment created from a multimedia exchange between Arab American artists Sharon Mansur and Meryl Zaytoun Murman. A collaboration between their bodies and the different bodies of water they find themselves living in relation to over the course of one year, their video exchange examines the space between—beliefs, identities, the human body, and the more-than-human on the landscapes they traverse.

FILMMAKER BIOS

Sharon Mansur (she/her) is a Lebanese American dance and interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, and community mover and shaker based in Winona, Mni Sota Makoce, Dakota land. Her performances, visual installations, public art happenings, and screendance projects embody subtle layers of presence, identity, environment, and memory. She facilitates The Cedar Tree Project, presenting Arab/SWANA centered contemporary art and artists, and SHIFT~ performance salons, supporting experimental collaborations among local creatives. Mansur and Meryl Zaytoun Murman have been evolving the collaborative project Wayfinding together since 2023.

Meryl Zaytoun Murman (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary artist using choreographic, cinematic and live art practices to explore and disrupt popular notions of spectacle, the body, virtuosity and gender. She was the 2024 McKnight International Choreographer collaborating with Sharon Mansur and the Cedar Tree Project, with whom she's shared a creative research process since 2023. She has twice received international fellowships through the US Embassy (in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Thessaloniki, Greece) for public art and film created with female and LGBTQ+ refugees exploring sexuality, gender and migration through movement.

Quand La Terre Respire

Dir. Sarah Abdel-Jelil • Mauritania, USA • 2025 • 9 min • French
Quand La Terre Respire, When the Earth Breathes, is composed of footage filmed on a sand dune in Tinyargue, Mauritania, the Atlantic Ocean, a Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and at a studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The soundscape composed with the filmmaker’s breath explores vocalizations and sounds of the Mediterranean sea.

FILMMAKER BIO

Sarah Abdel-Jelil is a Mauritanian-American filmmaker, dancer, musician, and multimedia artist based in Minneapolis, Mni Sota Makoce (Minnesota). Inspired by her nomadic upbringing in a multicultural household across eight different countries, her work explores the relational nature of home, movement, and liminal spaces as well as the tether between human and the more-than-human environment. As a filmmaker and dancer, she is drawn to the tension between the digital and physical, between the ephemerality of dance and the enduring nature of video.

The Coptic Grave

Dir. Ahmed Tharwat • USA • 2025 • 55 min • Arabic, English
This documentary is inspired by the story of Kyriakos, a Coptic Egyptian who lived in the filmmaker’s predominantly Muslim village for years. His life—and his extraordinary burial in a Muslim cemetery—broke with tradition, revealing a deeper story of coexistence, identity, and belonging.

FILMMAKER BIO

Ahmed Tharwat is a host and producer of the Arab/Muslim American television show BelAhdan (With Open Arms), a weekly program that has aired on public television. As a regular speaker and contributor on Minnesota Public Radio, he often shares his unique view of the world and American political and social events. He has also produced and directed many short stories for public television.

PRESENTED BY MIZNA

Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than 25 years, Mizna has been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.