Under the title Cinema Under Siege, this first series explores the risks filmmakers face under political regimes that monitor, censor, and suppress dissent—often at great personal cost, from legal persecution to exile. How do filmmakers navigate these threats while continuing to tell urgent stories?

In this second evening of the Cinema Under Siege series, we turn to Kings & Extras (2004) by Palestinian filmmaker Azza El-Hassan—a layered exploration of the fragmented Palestinian national film archive. What begins as a personal search for lost reels of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Film Unit becomes a meditation on absence, memory, and resistance. The film screens alongside All the Images Looked Real (2019) by Yazan Khalil, which poetically reflects on image manipulation and visual truth under occupation. 

Together, the films highlight the urgency of preserving audio-visual heritage in contexts of conflict and displacement—not just as historical record, but as a means of cultural continuity and resistance. Followed by a conversation with both filmmakers, moderated by Sanjukta Sunderason, with an introduction by Nadica Denić. 

Speakers

Azza El-Hassan is a filmmaker and professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Her work explores themes of memory, loss, and archives. She founded THE VOID PROJECT, a platform for restoring and reimagining lost Palestinian audiovisual heritage. 

Yazan Khalili is an architect, visual artist, and PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. His work interrogates image-making, colonial structures, and the role of visual culture under occupation. 

Sanjukta Sunderason is a cultural historian focused on visual art, political thought, and decolonization in South Asia and the Global South. She studies how artists navigate ideological and historical transitions. 

Nadica Denić is a film scholar and lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. Her research centers on first-person films about migration and the ethical and political dimensions of contemporary documentary.