Culture

Humaira Bilkis’ documentary exposes the neglected stories of Bangladesh's tea workers, whose colonial past and exclusion from recent revolutionary changes reveal deep, systemic inequalities.

Singing in Urdu, Punjabi, and Farsi, a punk band is creating a space for migrants in the country’s alternative music scene.

The son of a former Algerian diplomat reconciles with his heritage after working at a Muslim burial house.

The city’s cultural policies commodify artistic expression and manipulate diversity, perpetuating power imbalances and constrains genuine cultural innovation.

Set in a sand-swept Gulf city, Yellow Bus follows an Indian mother’s relentless pursuit of justice against an oppressive neoliberal system. This debut film captivates with its emotional depth a woman's fight for accountability.

Syrian writer Rasha Abbas and Palestinian artist Muhammad Jabali, in conversation with Diana Abbani, discuss the evolving dynamics and narratives shaping Berlin, a city once envisioned as an Arab cultural hub.

Music can amplify the voices of struggles and has a long history in liberation movements, says the Lebanese rapper.

Following the sudden death of her husband, a Jordanian woman finds herself confronting an oppressive male-world.

A stunning film that follows the journey of a middle-class Yemeni family as the everyday becomes progressively more difficult to manage.

The strange story of the abandoned Moorish cemetery in Asturias where hundreds of Moroccan soldiers who died fighting on Franco's side during the Spanish Civil War are buried.

Palestinian lives and cause are spotlighted at Berlin's AlFilm Festival amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza and unprecedented censorship in Germany

This 15th edition of the festival comes amid criticism aimed at German authorities and the Berlin Senate for silencing pro-Palestinian voices.

Aijaz Ahmad’s story may not be known to many outside a few selective international leftist circles, but it is one of exile, colonialism, and resistance that resonates in many parts of the Global South today.

The revival of Libyan literature in the past decade has been challenged by threats, harm, intimidation and censorship. Yet, in 2022, a Libyan novel won the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Intimate encounters with a few plants and people along a pilgrimage route. What visions of an alternative future appear through these encounters and how can we renew the ways we relate to and inhabit the world around us?

The plants disclose their knowledge and complex histories of colonialism and migration, shifting the author's perception of the city.

What changes when we walk in different cultural and political contexts? Which (un)privilege do certain bodies have to walk and wander? Dina Mohamed departs from her own embodied experience to explore these questions.

Walking through an other, how could we access imaginary and real landscapes of memory, grief and desire? The writer follows her embodied memory and that of the landscape. Where does trauma reside? And does nature know grief?

A very delicate and intimate ritual, where the author sheds off his multiple bodies, mourns his multiple deaths and welcomes his rebirth as a pine tree.

A walk along paths interwoven between inner landscapes of grief and the outer natural landscapes of transformation, in the village the writer has taken refuge in due to the economic and political crisis in Lebanon.

Much remains untold when it comes to grief, and much feels unheard as we walk and connect to everything by our side. This dossier reflects on the practice of walking through the writing of six artists.

In her second feature-length documentary Lina Soualem takes the viewers on a transcendent historical journey, exploring her Palestinian family’s past, which was always a mystery to her.

How popular music and songs are contributing to the normalization of hate and genocidal language in Israel

In the service of struggles for the self-determination of peoples. Lebanese reporter Jocelyn Saab's images reflect her commitment.

Queerness, homoeroticism, femininity, sexualities between Arab women as reviewed in transnational Arab literature, art, and film, are addressed in Mejdulene Bernard Shomali's outstanding book.

In her project My Fascist Grandpa, the Italian artist and photographer Laura Fiorio focuses on Italy’s fascist and colonial history through the lens of shared family histories.

A statement by a group of education researchers about the silence and silencing in academic institutions towards the unfolding genocide in Palestine and the crackdown on academic freedom across the world

Scenes of violence at the border are well known, from migrants beaten by Hungarian border guards at the border with Serbia, to Haitian migrants chased by US mounted border patrols at the border between the US and Mexico. But what about love?

In a world marred by conflict and displacement, the concept of 'home' takes on profound significance. Dr. Ammar Azzouz, a Syrian British architect, delves into the question, “What does it mean to lose home?” in his exceptional book, “Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria.”

A space for music and discussion, SAOT Festival in Berlin is the sound and voice of Palestinians and people from SWANA countries gathering for intersectionality and social change. An interview with one of its co-organizers, Diana Nazzal.