Elias Khoury

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) student brigade included leftist students from Lebanon who mobilized around the struggle for the liberation of Palestine in the early 1970s. With the departure of the PLO’s armed forces from Lebanon after the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, the brigade was disbanded. Mohamed Soueid was part of the group, and as the Lebanese civil war ended, he decided to film them and revisit their shared sites of memory, drawing a raspy-voiced portrait of defeated militants infused with poetry and generously doused in alcohol.

Zain, a 12-year-old boy scrambling to survive on the streets of Beirut, sues his parents for having brought him into such an unjust world, where being a refugee with no documents means that your rights can easily be denied.

Documentary filmmaker Makoto Sato offers this reflection on the life and career of Edward Said, the deeply influential literary and cultural critic, Columbia University academic, and outspoken advocate for displaced Palestinians, of whom he was one. Exploring the landscapes of Said's childhood and how they influenced his philosophy, this film features rare footage of Said and interviews with many of his colleagues, including Noam Chomsky.