Palestinian visual artist and filmmaker Kamal Aljafari (b. 1972) has spent over two decades exploring the meaning of forgotten and abandoned places and the politics of memory and preservation. This retrospective surveys a singular body of work forged through cinema’s struggle to recover Palestine’s erased histories.
Within cultural forms of representation such as cinema, Aljafari addresses the erasure of Palestinians not only as a historical and political question but also as an aesthetic one. How might a counter-occupation resisting occupation—a “cinematic justice”—be possible? The concept lies at the center of his thinking on film. His Jaffa Trilogy—The Roof (2006), Port of Memory (2009), and Recollection (2015)—examines erasure, destruction, removal, and expulsion as evidence of Israeli colonial violence against Palestinian cities. His films explore the possibilities of poetic and interpretive images, are accompanied by an inventive use of sound, and have opened a new era in archival practice. His recent A Fidai Film (2024) and With Hasan in Gaza (2025) rework and reinterpret found footage to reorganize and subvert colonial territory.
The retrospective presents thirteen films, from Visit Iraq (2003), made while he was studying at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, to his latest works, Going Home (2026) and Taking Masao Adachi’s Passport Photo (2026). Going Home will have its world premiere at the DMZ Docs, and Masao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo will make its Asian debut following its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Aljafari will attend the festival to give a masterclass and to talk about each of the films screened.