Spore Hosts: Falastin Cinema Week in collaboration with Jüdische Stimme Filmabend - Foragers (2022)

Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the joy and knowledge embodied in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law.  

After the screening, a panel discussion with Omar Tesdell,  Yara Dowani and Rabea Eghbariah will delve into questions around communal ecological knowledges and practices, how they are disrupted by colonial land administration and fragmentation, while examining how farming and collective care for the land embody acts of resistance. The conversation is moderated by Mikhail Lylov.