GRANDMOTHERS AND GRANDFATHERS TREES
Spore Hosts: Jüdische Stimme Film Night - LYD (2024)
A Sci-Fi Documentary ● directed by Rami Younis & Sarah Ema Friedland ● 2024 ● 1 hr 18 min
22. March 2025
19.00-21.30
19.00-21.30
Save the Date
For free
for adults
in English/in Arabic/in Hebrew
A story of a city that once connected Palestine to the world – what it once was, what it is now, and what it could have become.
This sci-fi documentary narrates multiple pasts, presents, and futures of the city of Lyd in Palestine/ Israel. From the perspective of the city herself, voiced by Palestinian actress Maisa Abd Elhadi, the viewer is guided through the lifespan of a five-thousand-year-old city and its residents.
Lyd was once a thriving Palestinian city with a rich history. In 636 AD, It was even considered the first capital of Palestine. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Lyd became an Israeli city, and in the process, hundreds of Lyd’s Palestinian residents were killed by Israeli forces, and most of the city’s 50,000 Palestinian residents were displaced. Today, the city has a Jewish Israeli majority and a Palestinian minority and is disinvested and divided by racism and violence.
For Palestinians, Lyd’s story is a painful and tragic fall from grace, which is why the film dares to ask the question: what would the city be like had the Israeli occupation of Lyd never happened?
After the film a panel with Orwa Switat, Himmat Zoubi and moderator Tyme Khleifi will talk about at the social fabric of so-called mixed cities in Palestine/Israel, their biopolitics, and themes of dispossession, displacement, erasure and collective and personal memory.
