CINEMA JUEU 2026
28th Edition
For centuries, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean were spaces of a complex and fertile coexistence between Jews and Arabs, who shared a language, traditions, and a common imaginary. For Jews and Muslims alike, Arabic was a shared territory of thought and experience, where bonds were forged that transcended any exclusionary identity.
The twentieth century fractured this reality: European colonization and the consolidation of modern nation-states imposed new borders upon it, replacing the complexity of these shared worlds with the logic of homogeneous identities — leaving behind displacements and wounded memories that still mark the present.
This cycle offers a reflection on this fragmented history. Through documentary, archive, testimony, and fiction, the selected films follow the traces of an erased coexistence and question the official narratives of separation.
At the heart of this journey is the work of Simone Bitton, a filmmaker born in Morocco and a champion of a Jewish-Arab identity that resists exclusionary national categories. Her filmography is a sustained investigation into memory, exile, and belonging: from her portraits of figures such as Mahmoud Darwish and Edmond Amran El Maleh to her explorations of the wall in Palestine and the Jewish traces left in Morocco, Bitton builds a rigorous and deeply humanist gaze throughout her work.
Alongside it, films such as No sea tu falta by Moisés Salama, Coexistence, My Ass! by Amber Fares, and Lyd by Rami Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland broaden the conversation from complementary perspectives: the search for roots and the critique of official discourses become tools for thinking about memory and a coexistence that, despite its conflicts, was once a lived reality. With this selection, a new platform is born, as a pilot edition within the festival itself — Barcelona Independent Jewish-Arab Films — dedicated to independent cinema emerging from the Jewish-Arab and Jewish-Muslim worlds, jointly driven by the Institute for Jewish Studies Barcelona, the Festival de Cinema Jueu de Barcelona, and ALBI, and conceived to become an annual event and, in time, to travel to other cities, festivals, and cultural institutions.
More than a look back at the past, this cycle invites us to rethink silenced histories and to recognize within them bonds that still defy imposed borders. Where geopolitics has produced separation, cinema opens up a space for memory and reflection.
