Filmmaker and Mediastorm Mentor Visit: Suha Araj

I Am Palestine from Suha Araj - Filmmaker on Vimeo.

Artist and filmmaker Suha Araj is often found overhearing, watching, or telling a story. Her work often explores the displacement of immigrant communities and her passion lies in bridging cultures. Her short film, I am Palestine screened at festivals internationally and is used as an educational tool. She served as a story advisor to the Sundance selection, Slingshot HipHop and produced the narrative short, Fruition. Installation art (Displacement, Inshallah Falasteen, Buried in Michigan) and acting (Chocolate in Heat, Suitcase) have inspired her storytelling in new mediums. Her latest feature script, Khsara explores the humor created from the contrast of cultural expectations. Khsara has been developed with RAWI and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, Torino Film Lab, Dubai Film Connection, EAVE, and IFP No Borders 2011. Khsara was also selected for the inaugural Emerging Visionaries program from IFP, the Lincoln Center and the Royal Bank of Canada. This February participated in the Berlinale Talent market and Talent Campus.

For seven years Suha was part of the film selection committee of the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco and has also served on the LunaFest Board of Advisors. She is a cofounder of DivineCaroline.com, a publishing platform for women to tell their stories.  She also teaches for Tribeca Films.  Her last work was a short film called The Cup Reader.  The film is about:

The Warde, shamed as a young girl yet renowned in Palestine for her mystical seeing and matchmaking, lives with her sister Jaleleh and reads the fortunes of her clients. Each visitor must make a choice between love and marriage, not having the luxury of both.

The Cup Reader Trailer from Suha Araj - Filmmaker on Vimeo.