SERIES
Quarterly at the Trylon
The Mizna Film Series is a selection of Southwest Asian/North African (SWANA) film programming curated by Mizna, a Saint Paul-based, Arab American arts nonprofit that publishes a biannual literary journal and presents the annual Twin Cities Arab Film Festival. The Mizna Film Series expands Mizna’s regular programming to include classic, contemporary, and repertory works from and connected to the SWANA region. The series offers documentary, narrative, and non-narrative filmmaking practices as well as newsreel, reportage, and archival works. Ticket prices vary.
Learn more about Mizna at mizna.org.
(1981, DCP, 100m, Arabic, w/ English Subtitles) dir Mohammed Shebl. Egypt’s answer to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this delirious musical-horror oddity follows two innocent lovers who stumble into a nightclub of disco-dancing vampires, rock ‘n’ roll numbers, and campy bloodsucking mayhem. Cairo meets Transylvania in a cult curio that’s equal parts satire, singalong, and surreal…
Screenings: October 28 7:00
(1977, DCP, 72m) dir Mustafa Abu Ali, Jean Khalil Chamoun, Pino Adriano. Tall el-Zaatar documents the August 12, 1976 massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees at Tall el-Zaatar, a UN-administered refugee camp in northeast Beirut. Produced after the massacre, but featuring footage shot before and during the siege, Tall el-Zaatar reconstructs the history of the camp…
Screenings: August 23 7:00
This screening has moved to The Heights Theater. More information and ticket link below. (1972, DCP, 107m, Arabic w/ English subtitles) dir Tewfik Saleh. No series on archiving Palestine would be complete without Tewfik Saleh’s 1972 classic, The Dupes (Al-Makhdu’un). Based on Ghassan Kanafani’s novella Men in the Sun and set in the 1950s, the…
Screenings: November 29 7:00
In 2024, the quarterly Mizna Film Series returns to the Trylon Cinema with Feminist Visions, a program focused on SWANA women filmmakers from the archives. Stay tuned for the May, August, and November screenings! To learn more about Mizna, visit mizna.org. THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS ARRIVED (1974, DCP, 64m, Arabic with English subtitles) dir…
Screenings: February 28 7:00, 9:00
The May program of Mizna Film Series: Feminist Visions presents a retrospective of Atteyat El-Abnoudy’s work. Often considered Egypt’s pioneer documentary filmmaker and "filmmaker of the poor," El-Abnoudy's oeuvre maps the intersections of class, labor, and gender in Egypt, largely through the perspectives of women. With training in law, journalism, and filmmaking, El-Abnoudy was active…
Screenings: May 22 7:00
(LA ZERDA ET LES CHANTS DE L’OUBLIL) (1982, DCP, 59m, Arabic and French with English subtitles) dir Assia Djebar. Algerian novelist and translator Assia Djebar changed professions to make La Zerda et les Chants de L'Oubli. Using French newsreels, the film represents the colonization of the Maghreb, rethinking the dominant narrative of this history. A…
Screenings: August 28 7:00
(2019, DCP, 90m, English and Arabic with English subtitles) Co-directed by Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny, Spaces of Exception investigates and juxtaposes the struggles, communities, and spaces of the Palestinian refugee camp and the American Indian reservation. The film features interviews with members of the American Indian Movement, the Mohawk Warrior Society, and several Diné…
Screenings: October 23 7:00
(1987, DCP, 83m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Abbas Kiarostami The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing trilogy of films set in the northern Iranian village of Koker takes a premise of fable-like simplicity—a boy searches for the home of his classmate whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous,…
Screenings: January 22 7:00, January 25 3:00
(1965, DCP, 131m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Ebrahim Golestan With this landmark debut feature, director Ebrahim Golestan delivers a jolt of modernism to pre-revolution Iranian cinema, laying the groundwork for the first new wave. When a mysterious woman (feminist literary icon Forugh Farrokhzād, and director of The House Is Black) abandons a baby in…
Screenings: April 23 7:00
(2005, DCP, 84m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Rakhshan Banietemad & Mohsen Abdolvahab On New Year’s Eve during the Iran-Iraq war, while Tehran endures relentless missile attacks, a middle-aged villager named Gilaneh must help her children navigate the war’s impacts. Fifteen years later, on another New Year’s Eve, the echoes of war linger in each…
Screenings: July 23 7:00
(2014, DCP, 88m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Rakhshan Banietemad Composed of seven interconnected stories, each delving into the struggles and complexities of working-class life and labor, Tales reflects on myriad social, political, and personal crises facing modern Iranians. Blending documentary and narrative forms, the film subverts expectations and examines the relationship between reality and…
Screenings: July 26 1:00
(1998, DCP, 96m, Iran, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Daruish Mehrjui w/Homayoun Ershadi, Golshifteh Farahani, Mohammad Reza Shahbani Nouri. Most well known for his influential Iranian New Wave film The Cow (1969), Mehrjui's The Pear Tree examines nostalgia, love, and memory through the autumnal scenes of cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari. When author Mahmoud (Ershadi) struggles with…
Screenings: October 22 7:00
(2025, 119m, Arabic with English subtitles) dir Annemarie Jacir w/ Saleh Bakri, Hiam Abbass, and Jeremy Irons. This historical drama is the first of its kind, as it tackles a critical and often overlooked period of Palestinian resistance. Palestine 36 takes place in 1936, as the British Empire tightens its grip on Palestine. Yusuf is…
Screenings: November 30 12:00
(1988, 105m, Arabic w/ English subtitles) dir Ossama Mohammed. Set in a coastal village northwest of Damascus, this essential Syrian film traces the catastrophic dissolution of the Ghazi family as they prepare for a double wedding celebration. Their preparations for the festivities culminate in a pressure cooker of underlying resentments and stifled desires. A richly…
Screenings: January 28 7:00
(1975, 177m, Arabic, French w/ English subtitles) dir Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina. Burning with passion, poetry, and a nation’s fervent spirit of resistance, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s stirring revolutionary epic vividly dramatizes the pivotal decades leading up to Algeria’s War of Independence. The film depicts the “years of fire” through the harrowing saga of Ahmed (Yorgo Voyagis), a proud…
Screenings: April 22 7:00
(1998, DCP, 120m, Arabic w/ English Subtitles) dir Ghasan Salhab. Ghassan Salhab’s often overlooked debut feature depicts Lebanon at the end of the 1980s. The film follows Khalil, who, after faking his death ten years earlier, returns to Beirut under a new identity and confronts the old friends and comrades he left behind. A haunting…
Screenings: July 22 7:00