Out of 13 Arab films featured this year, two are taking center stage at the 69th BFI London Film Festival, running from October 8 to 19. Both bring raw, unflinching stories from Palestine to one of the world’s most prestigious platforms — and notably, both were submitted for Academy Award consideration, underscoring the growing power and craftsmanship of Arab filmmaking.
The Voice of Hind Rajab, directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, revisits the haunting final moments of a young Palestinian girl trapped in her family car under Israeli fire — a moment the world first heard through a desperate emergency call. Blending documentary realism with dramatized reconstruction, the film turns an unimaginable tragedy into a cinematic act of remembrance.
Alongside it, Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36 dives into the 1936 Arab revolt against British rule, exploring the resistance and turmoil that would shape the decades to come. The film, which has also been selected as Palestine’s official submission to the 98th Academy Awards, extends Jacir’s legacy as one of the region’s most distinctive voices.
Together, the two works carry Palestine’s layered history — one rooted in the present, the other in the past — into a festival that’s often been a platform for global cinema’s most urgent storytelling.
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