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As the Witness Palestine Film Festival enters its 15th year, organizers see the milestone as a chance to reflect and celebrate while also offering a point of persistence for Palestinian advocates.
“There aren’t many cities of Rochester’s size that have sustained a Palestine Film Festival for this long. So, (15 years) is definitely a moment of significance,” says festival producer Casey Asprooth-Jackson.
“We’re always inspired by the South African freedom struggle, where there was a multi-decade effort all over the world,” he adds. “And there were inflection points, like the one we’ve lived through in the last few years, and there were lows when the issue was not in the news. It was in those periods when organizing was most important.
“So, that’s how we think about it. We’re happy for the festival to be able to provide that role of continuity for the community.”
Starting with a short screening and discussion event Nov. 9 and running through Nov. 22, WPFF will present 10 features, a collection of shorts, and more cultural events than any previous festival. Films to be screened include the winner of the Best First Feature Award at the Berlin Film Festival, “Chronicles from the Siege”; Michael Sullivan FRONTLINE Award for Journalism winner “American Doctor”; and “Edward Said: Between Worlds.”
Venues this year include the Little Theatre, the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum, Visual Studies Workshop, First Unitarian Church, Third Presbyterian Church, and the bar and venue District 48. There also will be free screening events at Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Rochester.
A particularly special connection this year is with the film preservation efforts of the George Eastman Museum. The three movies screened over the course of one day at the Dryden Theatre all use archival footage as a major component of their images.
For example, “Revolutionaries Never Die” features footage shot by Lebanese documentary filmmaker Jocelyne Saab in the 1970s and 1980s. Palestinian director Mohanad Yaqubi treats the piece as a “documentary letter,” finally responding to a request to collaborate that he did not answer before Saab’s death. Her images and observations about the world struck Yaqubi for their resonance and repetition with current-day events in the region.
Another film to be screened at the Dryden Theatre is “Palestinian Songs, Dances, and Images,” which uses footage discovered in the George Eastman Museum’s own archives. Silent film images of Palestine captured in the 1890s and early 1900s will be accompanied by a performance by musicians from the Rochester Philharmonic and Toronto Symphony orchestras.
A portion of the ticket sales for that showing will be donated to the Barenboim-Said Center for Music, a program in the city of Ramallah that promotes classical music education among youth in Palestine.
“Archival practice in filmmaking is something that’s really emerged in the last 10 years as a major focus of Palestinian cinema,” says Asprooth-Jackson. “We’re really excited to provide our audiences that experience and it’s such a great connection because the Eastman Museum is known as one of the world’s great film archives.”
The venue choices have been important to WPFF, which wants to associate as many institutions as possible with its message. WPFF has also focused on adding new or expanding old features in 2026. Chief among them is the festival pass, which, as with other film festivals, gets holders into every film. Asprooth-Jackson says it was the top request from previous years’ filmgoers and adds that, once they went on sale, the passes were sold out “pretty much immediately.”
“We’re super psyched. There was really an overwhelming response from the community of people who wanted to ensure that they had a seat at all of our events and demonstrate their support for WPFF in Rochester,” he says. “If anything, our biggest concerns are now, how do we accommodate people who didn’t manage to get tickets?”
One solution to the growing interest is to expand viewership with a virtual option. For example, the sold-out opening dinner’s keynote address with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mosab Abu Toha is now available as a webinar.
Besides Abu Toha, WPFF has also increased the number of in-person speaking and Q&A events for 2026. Omar El Akkad, author of “One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” Kareem Roustom, Emmy-nominated composer of “Palestinian Songs and Dances,” and Najla Said, daughter of Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, will be featured at film events, while artist Ebby El‑Sharwaky will conduct a hands-on workshop about traditional Palestinian embroidery art, tatreez.
Asprooth-Jackson also mentions that the artist Haitham Haddad, who designed WFPP’s poster this year and in 2025 might also be in attendance for some events during the festival. He says Haddad designed the poster to incorporate archival newspaper photos of Palestinians to highlight the event as a whole.
“He really emphasizes the Palestinian gaze in the image. To the point that, not only does it create a really beautiful image in the poster, but it also kind of turns the whole thing on its head,” Asprooth-Jackson says. “It’s like a reminder that our festival is not just people in Rochester, New York, looking at Palestine. It’s also the process of us looking at how Palestinians see themselves. (The poster) is a reminder that there’s also multiple degrees of agency when it comes to the vantage point.”
Providing the Palestinian community with a place to display all its perspectives is important for the festival. Asprooth-Jackson says the mainstream often portrays the Palestinian world in two common modalities: with a “dark and sinister Orientalist approach” which casts them as dangerous terrorists, or as “as passive receivers of oppression” who are reduced only to their suffering.
WPFF wants to resist both portrayals and instead give people an opportunity to understand their resilience and agency, along with the complexity and depth of their culture. For example, Asprooth-Jackson mentions that the tatreez workshop is a celebration of Palestinian art that developed over the years.
Already a fan of the festival, El‑Sharwaky first brought her embroidery to display for attendees a few years ago. The positive response spurred further interest in both the artist and audience to deepen their knowledge of the craft, with El-Sharwaky finding films about tatreez and festival-goers requesting a tutorial to learn more. The workshop this year is the outgrowth of that interest.
“Our dream is that people will attend this workshop, learn how to do it, and then they’ll be doing it in the theater during the movie. Because that’s what Ebby does,” says Asprooth-Jackson. “She comes to our movies with her needlepoint, and she embroiders tatreez into the tote bag for our festival. And we said, ‘If you can get a bunch of our audience doing that, that’s the total Palestinian cinematic experience right there.’ And that’s the best we could ever hope for.”
Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
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