This film was chosen as Films of Resistance's pick for the Lebanese season, to highlight the way Lebanese and Palestinian communities are interconnected.
This screening will be introduced by Lebanese-Palestinian curator Taghrid Choucair.
In this award-winning documentary, directors Masri and Chamoun focus on the women who played a crucial role in fighting the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. Preserving their stories on camera, Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon is a poignant documentary about courage, resistance, and hope.
Contemporary films in cinema from the Middle East often find inspiration in the history of the country. As part of this season on New Lebanese Cinema, it was therefore important to include a film which celebrates key players in the history of the Lebanese and Palestinian people and how their fates have been, and continue to be, interconnected.
Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon could be considered as a sister act to Heiny Srour's Leila and the Wolves (1984), in the way that Mai Masri gives us an intimate look inside the experiences lived by guerilla groups of Lebanese and Palestinian women in South Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War and Israeli occupation. The result is a gentle yet powerful recollection of the fight and the pain lived by those women, contrasted by scenes of joy, desires and creativity captured with compassion and accuracy by Mai Masri's camera.
Mai Masri is one of the pioneers of Palestinian documentary, with most of her work focusing on the linked histories of Lebanon and Palestine. Her films have been screened internationally and won over 90 awards. She is mostly recognised for her poetic and humanistic approach, centering women and children in her stories. Mai worked closely with her late husband Lebanese filmmaker Jean Chamoun and earned international acclaim with her films, including Children of Fire, Woman for Her Time, Children of Shatila, and Beirut Diaries.
Films of Resistance are a collective offering a decentralised screening and fundraising resource. All funds raised through their screenings are reinvested into Palestinian filmmaking.
