As planned, the 17th edition of the International Exile Cinema Festival was scheduled to take place from November 7th to 13th in the festival’s main building and cinema, the Viktorihus and the Haga Cinema. However, during an inspection by municipal building officials, serious damage was discovered in this old and historic building, posing a risk of collapse. As a result, all activities and presence there have been prohibited.

This news was a shock for the festival. With little time left until the 17th edition, set for November 7 to 13, the efforts of over a year by festival supporters—planning, preparing, reviewing, and selecting films—are now uncertain. Nearly 35 film screening sessions and main side programs were planned for this venue.

Finding alternative venues with professional standards in such a short time, especially during the peak fall season for cinema activities, is not feasible. Therefore, the festival organizing committee has decided to hold each of the eleven programs of the 17th edition, designed around different themes, at separate times to secure alternative screening venues more easily.

The special program “Close Up: Palestine’s Image” has been prioritized due to its topicality and will take place from November 7 to 13 in pre-selected cinemas and cultural centers in the city. Other programs, including the main program “Exile, a Global Experience” and special programs like “End the World – (Apocalypse),” will be scheduled later as suitable venues and professional cinema reservations become available.

Close Up: Palestine’s Image

Saturday, November 8

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2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Folket Hus Hammarkullen

No Other Land,
Palestine, Israel 2024, documentary, 90 min
Languages: Arabic, English, Hebrew, Swedish subtitles
Director: Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor

Reviewers say ‘No Other Land’ offers a compelling look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of forced displacement in Masafer Yatta. Themes of oppression, resilience, and human cost are central, with praise for the collaboration between Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham. The film’s raw depiction and storytelling are lauded, though some critique its perceived bias and lack of context.

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5:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Folket Hus Hammarkullen

The Palestine Exception
USA, 2024, documentary, 70 min
Language: English
Director: Jan Haaken, Jennifer Ruth

After years of right-wing assaults on higher education, attacks took a new form in 2023 and 2024 that has been described as the new McCarthyism. As students across the country organize protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, decades-long taboos in academia around criticism of Israel-the “Palestine exception”-are shattered. This film features professors and students as they join calls for a ceasefire and divestment from companies that do business with Israel and face waves of crackdown from administrators, the media, the police and politicians. Scholars from diverse disciplines explain what is at stake in these protests and why so many young people identify with the Palestinian cause. The documentary unfolds as a story of college campuses as sites of both rebellion and repression, places where personal and collective histories converge in unexpected ways.

Sunday, November 9

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4:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Selma Lagerlöfs Center

Beyond the Walls
France 2011, animation, documentary, 60 min
Language: Arabic, English subtitles
Director: Ahmed Adnan Al Ramahi

“Nothing is harsher than imprisonment. It’s the cruelest form of torture.”
A former Palestinian prisoner
This film tells the story of Arab and Palestinian captives who were detained in Israeli jails and how they had to adapt to a new life after their release. Upon release, the prisoners faced a number of difficulties adjusting to a new life of freedom, albeit within an occupied territory. They explain their mixed feelings about the changes in society and the political landscape experienced upon being released from the day-to-day monotony of prison life. Beyond the Walls contains beautifully-filmed interviews and novel graphics to provide a moving portrait of the interviewees and the emotions and feelings they are describing.

Monday, November 10

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1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Blå Stället – Angereds Bio

Tantura
England, Israel 2022, documentary, 94 min
Languages: Hebrew, Arabic, English, English subtitles
Director: Alon Schwaz

In the war of 1948 hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated. Israelis call it ‘The War of Independence. Palestinians call it ‘Nakba”‘. The film examines one village- Tantura and why “Nakba” is taboo in Israeli society.

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6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Blå Stället – Angereds Bio

The Palestine Exception
USA, 2024, documentary, 70 min
Language: English
Director: Jan Haaken, Jennifer Ruth

After years of right-wing assaults on higher education, attacks took a new form in 2023 and 2024 that has been described as the new McCarthyism. As students across the country organize protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, decades-long taboos in academia around criticism of Israel-the “Palestine exception”-are shattered. This film features professors and students as they join calls for a ceasefire and divestment from companies that do business with Israel and face waves of crackdown from administrators, the media, the police and politicians. Scholars from diverse disciplines explain

Tuesday, November 11

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1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Blå Stället – Angereds Bio

Wal
France, Israel 2004, documentary, 96 min
Language: Arabic, English subtitles
Director: Simone Bitton

WALL is a cinematic meditation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which the filmmaker blurs the lines of hatred by asserting her double identity as Jew and Arab. In an original documentary approach, the film follows the separation fence that is destroying one of the most historically significant landscapes in the world, while imprisoning one people and enclosing the other.

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6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Blå Stället – Angereds Bio

No Other Land,
Palestine, Israel 2024, documentary, 90 min
Languages: Arabic, English, Hebrew, Swedish subtitles
Director: Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor

Reviewers say ‘No Other Land’ offers a compelling look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of forced displacement in Masafer Yatta. Themes of oppression, resilience, and human cost are central, with praise for the collaboration between Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham. The film’s raw depiction and storytelling are lauded, though some critique its perceived bias and lack of context.

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6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Folket Hus Hammarkullen

God on Our Side
Netherlands 2005, Animation, 8 min
No dialogue
Director: Michal Pfeffer, Uri Kranot

Inspired by Picasso’s Guernica (1937), this film is fundamentally about the Israeli -Palestinian conflict. In the name of God, people are infused with rage and violence. Fear leads to brutality and vengeance follows. What hope is there for a child born into this circle of loss?

3000 Nights
Palestine etc 2016, fiction, 103 min
Languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Swedish subtitles
Director: Mai Mesri

Layal, a young newlywed Palestinian schoolteacher is arrested after being falsely accused and sentenced to 8 years of prison. She is transferred to a high security Israeli women’s prison where she encounters a terrifying world in which Palestinian political prisoners are incarcerated with Israeli criminal inmates. When she discovers she is pregnant, the prison director pressures her to abort the baby and spy on the Palestinian inmates. However, resilient and still in chains, she gives birth to a baby boy. Through her struggle to raise her son behind bars, and her relationship with the other prisoners, she manages to find a sense of hope and a meaning to her life. Prison conditions deteriorate and the Palestinian prisoners decide to strike. The prison director warns her against joining the rebellion and threatens to take her son away. In a moment of truth, Layal is forced to make a choice that will forever change her life.

Wednesday 12 November

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6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Selma Lagerlöfs Center

On the Side of the Road
Palestine, Israel 2024, Documentary, 83 min
Languages: Arabic, English, Hebrew, English subtitles
Director: Lia Tarachansky

When the Israeli government tries to silence a history, a light was shed on the nation’s biggest taboo. This is the story of those who fought to erase Palestine and created an Israeli landscape of denial and those who are fighting to uncover it.

Thursday 13 November

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18.30-20.30
ÖGAT, Medborgarhuset

Writers on the Borders
France, 2004, documentary, 90 min,
Language: French – English subtitles
Director: Samir Abdallah, Jose Reynes

A delegation of internationally renowned writers and intellectuals travel to Palestine in part as representatives of the International Parliament of Writers, in part to participate in a cultural event in honor of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, but also to see first hand life under Israeli military occupation. The delegation includes Russell Banks (U.S., author of The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction), Bei Dao (exiled Chinese poet), José Saramago (Portuguese, Nobel Prize for Literature winner), and Wole Soyinka (Nigerian Nobel Prize for Literature winner).