Lyd

Rami Younis / Sarah Ema Friedland, Palestine / UK / USA, 2023, 79 mins

This feature-length, sci-fi documentary shares multiple pasts, presents, and futures of the city of Lyd in Palestine/Israel. From the perspective of the city herself, the viewer is guided through the lifespan of a five-thousand-year-old city and its residents. Once a thriving Palestinian city with a rich history, when the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Lyd became an Israeli city. In the process, hundreds were massacred by Israeli forces, and most of the city’s 50,000 Palestinian residents were exiled. Today, the city has a Jewish Israeli majority and a Palestinian minority and is disinvested and divided by racism and violence, but this film dares to ask: what would the city be like had the Israeli occupation of Lyd never happened?

Time: 7:30pm