#chicago-palestine-film-festival — Public Fediverse posts

CPFF 2026 Short Film Roundup

By Guest Reviewer Alexei Holloway

Review: Don’t Be Long, Little Bird

Year: 2025

Runtime: 23 min

Director: Reem Jubran

Actors: Banna Bazzarie, Muna Basha, and Clara Khoury 

“Don’t be Long, Little Bird” is a short film that centers on the life of Palestinian women before the Nakba. 

After arguing with her mother, Rima (Banna Bazzarie), an American born Palestinian teenager reunites with her Palestinian great-grandmother, also named Rima (Muna Basha) in 1930’s Palestine through the use of time travel. As Rima spends time with her great-grandmother, she realizes that while she once thought of nothing but escaping the familiar for the “exotic”, what she truly wanted was to return home all along. 

The heart of the film is the life of Palestinian women before the Nakba. When we first meet Great-Grandma Rima she and her friend are playing around with a broken gun, laughing and pulling pranks on each other. The Zionist settlers are mentioned just once, but they have no presence in the film. They do not yet matter because Palestine has not yet been colonized. Great-Grandma Rima is part of a beautiful and loving community that eagerly welcomes teenage Rima even if she can’t provide straight answers on where she is from and how she arrived in Palestine. 

However, there is tension within both Rimas. Great-Grandma Rima dreams of leaving her village and traveling to the city, but, instead, she is married off to teenage Rima’s future grandfather. Teenage Rima asks her mother if she married her father because she loved him or because she had to and her mother tells her when she was married she felt a suffocation in her chest until she had Rima and that Rima was the best thing that ever happened to her. This tension is not fully explored or satisfactorily resolved. Maybe it is something director Reem Jubran can explore in her future films. 

Review: What a Pattern Tells

Year: 2025

Runtime: 15 min

Director: Bayan Abuta’ema

“What a Pattern Tells” is a brief look at the importance of embroidery in Palestinian life. It follows a day in the life of Aseel, a young Palestinian who hosts embroidery classes and has an embroidery circle, and Um Qusai, an elderly Palestinian who has her own embroidery circle and makes a living selling her embroidery. 

The short film can be broken into two sections. The first section focuses on Um Qusai and her friends who have been embroidering all their lives. Um Qusai shows off books that detail the patterns used by their ancestors and explains how she uses those same patterns in her own embroideries to prevent the settlers from stealing their culture from them. Embroidering is more than a hobby. It is an active weapon against the erasure of Palestine and Palestinian culture and life. 

The second part focuses on Aseel and her classes. She got into embroidery to reclaim a part of herself and realized that she could share that gift with hers by hosting classes. In one year, she taught 30 classes to people of all ages. She also has an embroidery circle (and one adorable fluffy cat) that meets weekly and each member of the circle expresses similar sentiments to Aseel. They embroider because it connects them to the past, to themselves, and to each other. 

While the film is an important look into the importance of embroidery, it lacks a firm structure. Additionally, given its short run time, it doesn’t have time to delve into embroidery and its importance, providing us only a big picture view of something that is vital to Palestinian identity. Hopefully, Director Bayan Abuta’ema can return to this subject in a longer feature. 

CPFF2026 Review: Sink

Year: 2025

Runtime: 88 min

Director/Writer: Zain Duraie

Actors: Clara Khoury, Mohammad Nizar, and Wissam Tobaileh

By Guest Reviewer Alexei Holloway

“Sink” (2025) is a heartrending look at a family coming to terms with their son’s mental illness. 

Basil (Mohammad Nizar) is the middle child of a middle-class, Jordanian family. While he is brilliant, he struggles socially and prefers spending time alone studying and watching videos on open heart surgery. He wants to be a heart surgeon. His oldest brother is the charming all-star basketball player and his sister is the cute and sweet little sister. His father travels for his work and while he adores his oldest and youngest children, he has a hard time connecting with his middle child. Basil’s mother, Nadia (Clara Khoury) adores him and is his biggest supporter and champion. 

            Nadia’s love for her son and his father’s distance prevent both parents from recognizing and acknowledging that Basil needs help. However, their ignorance is shattered when Basil is suspended for hitting a teacher. We see the events that lead up to the supposed assault, but we don’t see the assault itself, leaving it up to the audience to decide who is telling the truth: the school or Basil, who claims it was an accident. The father sides with the school while Nadia sides with her son. 

            Their eldest son has a championship game out of the city. The rest of the family goes to the game while Basil and Nadia remain home. Nadia believes if they have a few days alone, she can reach her son and “fix” whatever the problem is. Their loving moments of reconnecting are with many alarming moments such as when Basil wakes her up while wearing a horse mask and forces her to wear a bunny mask and then grunts at her and when he goes to a park with a chicken coop and tries to murder the chickens. 

            Basil’s parents schedule a therapist but he refuses to go and lashes out, hurting his mother in the process. Horrified by what he’s done, Basil reports himself to the police. When the police arrive, Nadia rushes to her son’s side and sits with him in the ambulance, holding his hands, making it clear that she will remain by his side no matter what.  

            “Sink” can be a difficult watch as Nadia struggles with accepting that her son needs help and Basil grows increasingly unpredictable. Clara Khoury gives an outstanding performance as her love for her son is always present, even when she is terrified of him. She never gives up on him, even when he attacks her, and yet she can’t stop her heart from breaking when she realizes she isn’t sure she can help him. Mohammad Nizar gives a truly moving performance as a teen who knows he is different but doesn’t understand why. Nizar never allows Basil to be a monster. He makes Basil adorably at ease when he is playing with his little sister, letting her put makeup on him and playing charades, and helping his mother around the house and, even when Basil is at his most threatening, he is not a cruel psychopath. He is a lost and struggling child who doesn’t have the tools to help him survive in a neurotypical world.

CPFF 2026 Review: Thank You for Banking with Us

Year: 2024

Runtime: 92 minutes

Writer/Director: Laila Abbas

Actors: Yasime Al Massri, Clara Khoury, Kamel El Basha, Adam Khattar, Salwa Nakkara

By Guest Reviewer Alexei Holloway

“Thank You For Banking With Us” (2024) is a funny and moving look at sisterhood and challenging the patriarchy. 

Noura (Yasime Al Massri) and Maryam (Clara Khoury) are estranged sisters with less than perfect lives. Noura is a beauty clinician who cares for their ailing father while Maryam is stuck in a loveless marriage with children she no longer feels connected to. When their father dies, the two work together to take their father’s money out of the bank before their absent and judgmental brother who lives in America comes along and takes the money and half the house (per Sharia law).

What follows is a funny pseudo-heist as the sisters bounce off of obstacle after obstacle trying to navigate a deeply patriarchal society and arguing with each other. While looking for help from every man they know, they are constantly shut down, told they are sinners and ungrateful daughters, and have no right to ask for that money. Yet, their brother never bothered to care for their father or check in on his sisters. It was Noura and Maryam who cared for their father, feeding him, cleaning up after him, checking in on him. Why should their brother get both the money and half the house when he did nothing? Why do male relatives, husbands, and lovers have the right to tell these women no when they’ve done nothing to help Noura and Maryam survive? 

            Clara Khoury and Yasmine Al Massri are a powerful and hilarious duo. When they are not cursing and arguing with the unhelpful men in their lives, they are arguing with each other, pulling up old wounds and half-remembered fights from their past like real siblings. Yet, when they see how the other lives and are betrayed by the men they are supposed to be able to rely on, they realize all they have ever had is each other. That will never stop them from fighting, but it helps bring them closer together and, with a little help from Maryam’s youngest son Ali (Adam Khattar) enables them to finally work together to get the money they deserve and to properly lay their father to rest. By the end, one hopes that their newly rekindled friendship can also prevent Maryam’s sons from turning into the very men who did nothing to help the women retrieve their rightful inheritance.