Shorts 2 - How to Survive a Hostile World

بيمو (Bimo)
Oumnia Hanader, France, Algeria, 2025, 23 min. Arabic, French, Italian with English subtitles

لا تأخذ فرحتي (Don't Take My Joy Away)
Omar Gabriel, Lebanon, 2026, 7 min. Arabic with English subtitles

Hüznün Derisi (Skin of Sadness)
Hasan Ege Çalışkan, Turkey, 2025, 20 min. Turkish with English subtitles

Flight Risk
Mohammad Awad, Australia, 2025, 16 min. English

We Will Haunt Your Archive
R.R., USA, 2026, 10 min. English

Followed by a talk with R.R. and Mohammad Awad

From Islamophobia and body horror to the ongoing reality of Palestinian displacement, these films turn survival into something unruly: a joke in the face of suspicion, a dance among the ruins of war, a love story with a vampire, and a protest that refuses to be erased. Faced with a world that keeps asking for fear, obedience, and silence, these films have other plans.

R.R. (Raed Rafei) is a filmmaker, film scholar, multimedia journalist and Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mohammad Awad is a multidisciplinary Arab-Australian artist, writer, filmmaker, poet and playwright whose work centres queer identity, race and belonging.