Lyd

Rami Younis & Sarah Emma Friedland, Palestine, UK, US, 2023 78mins

Arabic English subtitles

Doors open: 6.45pm
Start: 7pm

This 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.

Lyd was once a thriving Palestinian city with a rich history. In 636AD, it was considered to be the first capital of Palestine. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Lyd became an Israeli city, and in the process, hundreds of Lyd’s Palestinian residents were massacred by Israeli forces, and most of the city’s 50,000 Palestinian residents exiled.

Today, the city has a Jewish-Israeli majority and a Palestinian minority and is disinvested and divided by racism and violence. Lyd’s story is a painful and tragic fall from grace, which is why our film dares to ask the question: what would the city be like had the Israeli occupation of Lyd never happened?

As the film unfolds, documentary portions follow a chorus of characters through their daily lives, creating a tapestry of Palestinian experience of this city, and vivid animations use the language of speculative fiction to envision an alternate reality where the same characters live free from the trauma of the past and the violence of the present. As the film cuts between fantastical and documentary realities, it leaves the viewer questioning which future should prevail.