SAFAR Film Festival 2025 is coming to Manchester, presenting cinema from across the Arab world.

This year’s festival is bringing documentaries and special events to Contact Theatre!

Unspoken Silences: Reclaiming Colonial Archives of Palestine

A special cine-concert experience alongside a screening of the short film The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing.

How do we go about addressing the past through archival images when what we see is through the eye of the coloniser? How do we gain access to and reclaim that archive, when it is not in our possession? This programme is an open invitation to revisit Palestine in two different eras, with colonial visual material reimagined in the first with music and sound by artists Rana Eid and Cynthia Zaven, and in the second with open reflections by filmmaker Theo Panagapoulos about his own Palestinian heritage. A conversation with the three artists will follow.

Tickets available for Tuesday 24 June, 7:30pm

 

The Brink of Dreams (2024)

In a remote village in southern Egypt, a group of young Coptic women defy societal norms by forming an all-female street theater troupe. Over four years, The Brink of Dreams intimately chronicles their journey from adolescence to adulthood, capturing their aspirations to become performers and the challenges they face from their conservative community. Through their art, they confront issues of gender roles and seek to carve out a space for self-expression and empowerment.

Tickets available for Saturday 28 June, 7:30pm