Pray Beyond Borders - Films for Palestine

7:00 PM | SIFF Cinema Uptown

We will be showing clips from the forthcoming documentary Pray Beyond Borders - A Requiem for Friendship Park and discussing the feature-length version of the film we are finishing now and the ongoing crisis at the border, as well as showing a series of short films from Palestine.

All proceeds from ticket sales will go directly to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

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In 2019 a group of 20 binational filmmakers worked together to capture the unique relationship between the Border Church and Border Mosque who shared ceremonial space at Friendship Park across the U.S. / Mexico border for more than a year. Sadly almost 50 years after Friendship Park opened as the only place on the US/ Mexico border where separated families could meet the park was closed. It has never been reopened and right now the Biden administration is finishing the replacement of the 18-foot tall border wall, with a 30-foot-tall border wall that goes all the want into the Pacific Ocean.

At the end of 2019, these organizers drove Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib into Mexico for her first visit to the border and she almost immediately started crying as the scene of the border unfolding around us reminded her of visiting her family in Palestine.

This film, Pray Beyond Borders - A Reqieum for Friendship Park Directed by Mustafa Dustin Craun and Edited by Imran J Khan is deeply tied to what's happening in Palestine right now as the film closes with Congresswoman Rashida on the beach next to the border wall. She started talking to a cameraman who had been photographing the wall for 30 years. He told us the story on camera about how the head of the border patrol who built the border wall in the US retired and went as a consultant to build the wall for the state of Israel.

We will be showing clips and discussing the feature-length version of the film we are finishing now and the ongoing crisis at the border, as well as showing a series fo short films from Palestine.