Fadia’s Tree

2021

English, Arabic with English subtitles

While millions of birds migrate freely in the skies, Fadia, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, yearns for the ancestral homeland she is denied. She challenges Sarah, the director, to find an ancient mulberry tree that stands as witness to her family’s existence – with only inherited memories, a blind man and a two-headed dragon as her guides. Along the way, Sarah meets with ornithologists whose observations on the homing instincts of the birds inadvertently reveal the unresolved problems of the region. Fadia's Tree is a wonderfully adept and remarkable documentary about memory and migration which explores issues of belonging, banishment and arbitrarily drawn borders.