Screening Rights 2024: Paradiso, XXXI, 108 + Intercepted

Screening Rights Film Festival is bringing the latest socially engaged and formally innovative cinema from the Global South to audiences in the West Midlands. The centrepiece of its 10th-anniversary edition consists of two Palestinian-Ukrainian solidarity screenings designed to complement one another. The second of these sees two films demystify the logic (or lack thereof) of imperial regimes with stark clarity, without losing an ounce of humanity.

Already renowned for his work with archives, Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari takes this engagement to a new level in the subtly sarcastic short Paradiso, XXXI, 108. Through recontextualised images of military training and explosions, Aljafari exposes the occupation army’s obsession with weaponry, masculinity and the gamification of war.

Similarly to her documentary feature debut, Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open, which was shot on elektrychkas — the local trains that Ukrainians use to commute between large cities and smaller towns — Oksana Karpovych’s highly acclaimed Intercepted consists of oral testimonies. This time around, however, these belong not to Ukrainian commuters but to Russian occupiers in Ukraine during the full-scale invasion, who are having phone conversations with their families back home. Through an effective juxtaposition of these harrowing audio recordings, intercepted by the Ukrainian military, with the devastated natural and urban landscapes of Ukraine, the film names and shames the aggressor, all the while humanising those to whom it is dedicated: ‘ordinary Ukrainians, who fearlessly resist the imperialist Russian machine.’

The screening will be followed by a live panel discussion, featuring guest curators and invited panelists.