Mai Masri
Born in Amman in 1959 to a Palestinian father from Nablus and an American mother, Mai Masri studied film at the University of San Francisco. In 1981, she returned to Lebanon, the country of her childhood, to devote herself to documentary filmmaking. Masri is among the pioneers of the new Palestinian cinema, independent from revolutionary cinema: in 1983, she became its first woman director, as well as its only female cinematographer and editor. Her films, some of which were co-directed with her husband Jean Chamoun, are deeply shaped by exile and by her experience of the Lebanese Civil War. By giving voice primarily to women and children, her documentaries offer powerful portraits and testimonies of life in Palestinian refugee camps and during the civil war, including Children of Fire (1990), Children of Shatila (1998), A Woman of Her Time (1995), and Dreams of Exile (2001). These films have received more than 60 international awards. In 2011, the couple received the MIPDoc Trailblazer Award in Cannes, honoring their body of work. In 2015, Masri directed her first fiction feature, 3000 Nights, inspired by the testimonies of Palestinian women prisoners who gave birth in Israeli jails. The film went on to win numerous awards and represented Jordan at the Academy Awards, and Palestine at the 2017 Golden Globe Awards.
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From the Shatila camp in Beirut to the Dheisheh camp in Bethlehem, this film follows two teenage girls – Mona, 13, and Manar, 14 – who, separated by exile, get to know each other and form a friendship via the Internet, until a meeting becomes possible thanks to political events. Shot after the liberation of Southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation and at the outset of the Second Intifada, the f...
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Subscription access
From the Shatila camp in Beirut to the Dheisheh camp in Bethlehem, this film follows two teenage girls – Mona, 13, and Manar, 14 – who, separated by exile, get to know each other and form a friendship via the Internet, until a meeting becomes possible thanks to political events. Shot after the liberation of Southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation and at the outset of the Second Intifada, the f...
Children of Shatila
Subscription access
_Children of Shatila_ tells the story of Farah and Issa, two children from Beirut’s Shatila camp who use their imagination and creativity to overcome the overwhelming difficulties of living in a Palestinian refugee camp that has survived massacre, siege, and dispossession.
