Palestine Film Fund Selects Seven Projects For Second Funding Round 2026

The Palestine Film Institute (PFI) has selected four features and three short films in various stages of development, production and post-production for its second funding round of 2026, with support totalling €43,000.

Selected projects span documentary, fiction, animation and hybrid forms, with themes such as grief, loss and memory, as well as projects that celebrate life and reinforce commitment to resisting erasure.

“Palestinian cinema has survived for decades through filmmakers working across barriers to funding, without archives, and often without a way home,” said PFI executive board member Reem Shadid.

“The Fund exists so that their work comes first, and so that the conditions under which a film is made do not determine whether it is made. These seven projects reinforce that the great stories are there, and with sustained resources and a stable infrastructure they are able to thrive."

The second cycle jury included Palestinian-American artist and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif, Egyptian director and producer Nada Riyadh, and Tunisian producer Dora Bouchoucha, who delivered the following statement regarding the selection:

“It is difficult to make films under any circumstances. To make films in Palestine, from Palestine, or across the Palestinian diaspora today comes with a particular set of challenges, but also with an extraordinary urgency to tell, preserve, question and imagine.

“The projects we encountered reminded us that Palestinian cinema cannot be contained within a single reality or geography. From Ramallah to Gaza, from Jaffa to the diaspora, the selected projects reflect a multiplicity of Palestinian experiences, perspectives and ways of seeing. They demonstrate a desire to tell stories on their own terms, through distinct cinematic languages.

"In making our selection, we considered not only the artistic strength and potential of the projects, but also the circumstances in which they are being developed and the position of the filmmakers within the industry. We were particularly attentive to projects emerging from challenging working conditions and to young and emerging voices. However, many more film projects deserved support. We wholeheartedly wish all filmmakers strength and freedom in bringing their films to life, and hope they contribute to the richness, diversity and continuity of Palestinian cinema.”

PFI said it has received a total of 107 submissions from around the world for its second funding cycle of 2026, comprising 32 feature-length projects (34%) and 63 short films (66%). Documentary projects represented the majority of feature submissions at 56%, while fiction dominated short film applications at 46%.

PALESTINE FILM FUND 2ND ROUND 2026: 

FEATURE FILMS:

The Sky Is No Longer Blue, dir: Kareem Satoom (Palestine)
[Development, Documentary]
Synopsis: The film follows three artists from Gaza as they experience genocide through their bodies, memories, and art, where creative work becomes a direct extension of what they endure: fear, loss, and survival. Through graffiti, sculpture, and painting, they attempt to transform the traces of violence into image, material, and memory - not to aestheticise the devastation, but to understand it and resist its erasure. Alongside their stories, Gaza emerges as a fourth character: a city present in the walls, rubble, sea, alleyways, and faces, shaping the artists' bodies, memories, and work. The three trajectories intersect to reveal how body, memory, city, and art become intertwined in an ongoing attempt to preserve humanity amid genocide.
 
On The Sea Road, dir: Fitnat Waked (Palestine)
[Post-production, Documentary]
Synopsis: Amid war, through cameras and WhatsApp calls, a fragile yet powerful friendship unfolds between two young Palestinian women - one in besieged Gaza, the other in Yafa - as they struggle to stay connected while distance and collapsing communication threaten to separate them. Their bond becomes both a lifeline and an act of quiet resistance, revealing solidarity, the painful contradictions of their radically unequal realities, and a shared search for freedom and identity.
 
Milad – The Birth Of Walid, dir: Ahmad Saleh, Basel Nasr & Mats Grorud (Palestine, Jordan, Norway)
[Development, Animation]
Synopsis: Serving a life sentence, Palestinian writer Walid Daqqa turns imagination into reality, summoning five animal companions and an ancient olive tree. When the tree grants them seven magical seeds of invisibility, they execute bold acts of defiance - smuggling writings, a musical instrument, mobile phones, and more. Though each act tightens the grip of the prison walls around them, a frail Walid on his deathbed uses the final seed to reunite with his daughter, Milad, who reveals the secret to passing through the tree into a free world where orchards bloom over the ruins of prisons.
 
This Is Not A Set, dir: Yumna Marwan (Lebanon, Jordan)
[Development, Fiction]
Synopsis: A satirical nightmare into the unravelling of a Palestinian community in Beirut as a local television production turns their camp into a film set, forcing them to confront the seductions and violences of representation.
 

SHORT FILMS:

Mirrors, dir: Nizar Alzaeem (Palestine, UK)
[Development, Animation]
Synopsis: The life of a family that could be any family, anywhere - its joys, its ordinary rhythms, its violent erasure - is witnessed entirely through the surface of a mirror: when only a young girl survives bombing and displacement, she goes into the looking-glass, where the final reflection she finds is herself.

Your Specter Will Remain Present In My Mind, dir: Fairouz Hasan (Palestine)
[Production, Hybrid]
Synopsis: An experimental documentary film that follows martyr posters across cities, tracing how walls become a living archive of memory, loss, and resistance. Through close observation of weathered, torn, and repeatedly replaced images, that reflects on how public space preserves grief while time, violence, become witnesses to different ways of death.

Gaza Ram, dir: Abod Nasser (Palestine)
[Production, Animation]
Synopsis: When leaving Gaza becomes conditional on erasing every trace of her existence, a young woman is given the opportunity to evacuate to France, on the condition that she leaves all her personal belongings behind. A series of nightmares begins, blurring reality and memory. Realizing that her memories may be the only thing she can carry with her, she decides to transfer her entire archive into her mind, attempting to smuggle her memory across the border.