Tuesday 15th December 2015 at 6.30 p.m.

A Palestinian Film Festival has been running in Leeds since November, opening with a screening at the Leeds International Film Festival. The final film is Open Bethlehem (aka Operation Bethlehem) screening this coming Tuesday. It will be nice to finish with the full cinematic experience. The film records the writer and director Leila Sansour’s journey to revisit and explore the town of her birth and upbringing. The town is  not only under Israeli occupation but is a meeting point of cultures and conflicts involving the communities and the religions of this region. The conflicts has been exacerbated by the construction of the ‘separation wall’ by the Israeli state. Sansour’s film records a rather novel response to this situation. It seems she shot about 700 hours of footage and the result was something different from what she had expected. The film is in English, and in colour and runs for 90 minutes.