PREVIEW: 2023 SWANA FILM FESTIVAL

The first SWANA Film Festival, presented by Arts & Cultural Exchange (ACE) Parramatta, will comprise a 3-day festival of Southwest Asian and North African cinema screening at Riverside Theatre, Parramatta across the weekend of April 28-30, 2023.

ACE Executive Director Anne Loxley said, “The Festival is an important community-led project that showcases the diverse and important perspectives of Southwest Asian and North African voices.” SWANA Film Festival Director Hajer Al-Awsi (pictured, below) said, “The Festival aims to connect diasporic audiences to films from the region, and promises to be incredibly inclusive, featuring two LGBTQIA+ films as well as representing over five different languages.”

Established in 1984, Arts & Cultural Exchange is a Western Sydney-based community arts organisation with five program pillars: First Nations, Youth Engagement, Multicultural Women, Artists with Disability and People in Aged Care, and Screen. They advocate for social justice, the use of creativity to reverse disadvantage and the producing of ground-breaking interdisciplinary, intergenerational collaborative projects co-devised with the communities with whom we work.

These values will be central to the inaugural SWANA Film Festival, which promises to be a must-attend event for film lovers, artists, and cultural enthusiasts showcasing 20 unique films from such filmmaking centres as Iraq, Türkiye, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Armenia, and Syria. (Pictured, above; Grace, directed by Brian Patto, screening as part of the Australian SWANA Cinema: Through the Eyes of the Diaspora strand)

SWANA is a decolonial term for the region, its aim to displace the terminologies of Middle Eastern, Near Eastern, Arab World or Islamic World that have colonial, Eurocentric, and Orientalist origins and acknowledge the diversity and complexities of those communities.

The SWANA Opening Night honours went to Baghdad in My Shadow by acclaimed Swiss-Iraqi filmmaker Samir (Iraqi Odyssey, 2014). The Australian Premiere screening will be the centrepiece of the first night festivities, which will also include regional delicacies and music by DJ Nelya.  Also having its Australian Premiere at the festival is Turkish director Ümit Ünal’s story of a unique friendship, Love, Spells and All That, the acclaimed films screening with Jawahine Zantar's On My Fathger's Grave (Morocco); two films from Lebanese filmmaker Chantal Parmatian, Sandjak and Houbout; and, Ramazon Kilic's Penaber (Türkiye). 

Other program highlights include a selection of outstanding shorts from Syria to Morocco and award-winning director Eliane Raheb’s Miguel’s War (pictured, right), featuring Miguel Jleilaty as the gay Lebanese man returning home to confront the ghosts of his past. The Festival’s Closing Night will include shorts spanning Iraq, Egypt, the Emirates and Syria, and Egyptian director Ayten Amin’s coming-of-age romantic comedy/drama, Souad (pictured, top).

Audiences can attain an all-access pass, which includes entry to Sobhiya morning feast; screenings from Melbourne-based artist Sammaneh Pourshafighi; and, Andari’s Stove intimate exploration of life in a rural village in Mount Lebanon, followed by a panel discussion featuring Refugee Art Project.

Full session and ticketing information can be found at the Official Website of 2023 SWANA FILM FESTIVAL.