Dreams and dystopias, archeological records and the call of outer space. Science fiction, so often a precision vehicle for sociological exploration and self-analysis, here opens a complex conversation on life in the Middle East today, as told by its diverse residents. The news may offer bare facts, but sometimes it is more our imaginative or speculative forms of storytelling that can most directly capture and convey an experience. Turn a camera on oneself: film is identity. Turn a camera on the world: film is a direct window. Even when film provides a more meditated perspective -- through narrative, through artifice, through experiment -- it may not give up this immediacy and relevance. Instead, it opens up new ways of illuminating oneself and one's universe.

Smog

FILM Lebanon 2014
Jad Sleiman

In the near future, Factories filled the planet and intoxicated the Air, Humans started living in the deserted waste where Smog covers the skies and hides the Sun. Lithops, a 12 year old girl, lives an empty dull life in this deserted world with her older sister Miasma. Imprisoned behind her gas mas

Beginnings

FILM Egypt 2015
Hadil Hassan

Traveling through the seas among the playful fish and jelly fish, a man slowly realizes that his surroundings are changing into a darker and bleaker environment. Life is quickly seeping away and only one of his companions is left among the ruins. He desperately tries to save it, but all is in vain u

The Waiting Room

FILM Qatar 2016
Hend Fakhroo

With only a thin curtain between them, two families from different cultures share a room in a hospital. An unexpected friendship develops between the two young women, who realize they have more in common than they expected.

Collision

FILM Lebanon 2016
Nina Abouzeid

Anais, a young woman experiences what it is to deny one's self and overcomes her inner conflict with the help of a therapist.

The Salt Man

FILM Iran, United States, United Arab Emirates 2015
Seyed Sajad Moosavi

Being left unsupported, Dr. Sa'id 'Aram, a genius artist, is obliged to work in a salt mine with his six-year-old girl. The story begins when he receives statuettes from various festivals, displaying his creativity. Using a symbolic language, this artistic film tries to present new ideas to the audi

Skipped

FILM United Arab Emirates 2017
Faisal Hashmi

A man working at the office late at night stumbles upon a time-travel power that can boost his productivity. But a power so life-changing is nothing to sneeze at.

M1-Kø

FILM United Arab Emirates 2017
Fadu Shake

A film about journey to find a deeper meaning of the unknown, "M1-K0" follows Mikolaj Zenliski, a Polish software engineer on his bicycle training in middle of the desert, who could be blasting off to the Red Planet after getting through to the next stage of the Mars One project.

The Pen of Mirrors

FILM Saudi Arabia, United States 2014
Bader Al-Homoud

The Pen of Mirrors tells the story of a mythical pen which grants whoever holds it the ability to write the immortal line engraved in the collective memory of humanity. The events are set in the future, 40 years after the last paper book was published where Qais goes off in search of the "pen of mir

ECREVAX

FILM Lebanon 2014
Oliver Bou Eid

After the discovery of the Ercevax vaccine, a scientist goes back in time in an attempt to save his son's life.

Flesym

FILM Iran 2015
Behrooz Roostaei

An engineer is haunted by traumatic memories that send eerie figures into his dreams, then waking life. An effectively creepy psychological study. Behzad (played by Nima Rad) is a civil engineer who gets very close to signing an important contract that can change his life... Writer/Producer/Director

Shreds

FILM Lebanon 2014
Luana Bassil

In 2030, the birth rate has decreased radically; there are 1024 children born per year. Every human, political, financial aspect has gone bad. A couple comes back home to change and go out for dinner. Anne tells her husband that she is pregnant but she doesn't want to keep the baby. Tarek, strongly

The Puddle

FILM Turkey 2016
Serdar Yilmaz

A man in the flea market (Mihran Tomasyan) walks while checking walls covered with old posters and counters full of stuff with prying eyes. Encountering an incarnating, he is carried away into another reality. Serdar Yilmaz (Izmit, 1973) graduated from Marmara University, Painting Department. (MA an

The Last Interview

FILM United Arab Emirates 2015
Mohamed Al Hamadi

Saif, an unemployed Emirati going for an interview at a mystery job, is given several tests that will make or break him. Mohamed Al Hamadi is an emerging Emirati Filmmaker who, from a young age grew to have a passion for cinema. Mohamed has taken leadership roles in several short films which got acc

pepsi, cola, water?

FILM Egypt 2015
Tom Bogaert

"pepsi, cola, water?" is a short experimental documentary about Sun Ra's legendary visit to Egypt in 1971. Jazz pioneer and philosopher Sun Ra had a deep fascination with outer space and ancient Egypt. Computer animation, archival footage, and music from Sun Ra are interwoven to create a recreation/

Submarine

FILM Lebanon 2016
Mounia Akl

Under the imminent threat of Lebanon's 2015 garbage crisis, Hala, a wild child inside of a woman, is the only one to refuse evacuation, clinging to whatever remains of home. Mounia Akl is a director and writer from Lebanon based in New York with an MFA in Directing from Columbia. Apart from directin

Remnants of the Hive

FILM United Arab Emirates 2016
Madison Moore

Remnants of the Hive is the story of a girl who is faced with the role of caregiver as her grandfather's memory deteriorates. By considering the parallels between the behaviors of bees and humans, this short narrative film explores the distinction between love and obligation, and the implications of

Hind's Dream

FILM Qatar 2014
Suzannah Mirghani

Hind's Dream is a story that reflects the history, modernity, and folklore of the Arab Gulf states. Hind is a bedouin girl who spends weeks alone in the tent as her husband hunts. In a tangled landscape of dream and reality, she recounts a strange dream about wandering alone in the desert, meeting a

The Digger

FILM United Arab Emirates 2015
Ali Cherri

Shot in the Sharjah desert, The Digger follows the everyday life of Sultan Zeib Khan, the Pakistani caretaker who has been guarding the ruins of a Neolithic necropolis for twenty years. A witness to the nation's founding mythologies, Sultan preserves archeological ruins, keeping them from falling in