Join the SAFAR Futures programmers for the UK premiere of R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity (2022).
This film event is curated by Amina Ali, Asmaa Elsouda and Osama Harhor who are taking part in SAFAR’s mentorship scheme for early-career Arab film programmers. Handpicked in response to this year’s festival theme “A Journey Through Space & Time”, R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity documents cross-continental relationships of solidarity spanning Japan and Palestine in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mohanad Yaqubi’s film functions as a reflection on a collection of twenty 16mm films, safeguarded in Tokyo by the Japanese solidarity movement with Palestine. By synthesising these archival resistance films into a montage essay, R21 aka Restoring Solidarity simultaneously acts as a catalog, time machine and archive. This intensely resonant film poignantly explores the motives, aspirations, and disappearance of a generation and their struggles, not only in Japan, but around the world.
Yaqubi explores the oppressed human experience with a contemplative and empathetic lens. By capturing intimate moments and subtle emotion he reveals profound truths about Palestine in the mid to late 20th century, and more importantly, the people who lived through it. His films such as 2015’s OFF FRAME aka revolution until victory are catalysts for empathy and understanding; R21 is no different.
The screening will be followed by an in-person Q&A with the director and attendees will also receive an exclusive zine curated to complement the event.