Palestine Cinema Days 2026: Return to Haifa

The Main Cinema 115 SE Main St, Minneapolis, MN 55414 In collaboration with Filmlab Palestine, Mizna presents Return to Haifa on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. This screening is part of an international initiative to make the Palestine Cinema Days Festival a global event. From Filmlab Palestine: “A fragile ceasefire may quiet the headlines, but it does not stop the genocide. In Gaza, death continues through siege, starvation, displacement, and abandonment. As the world slowly looks away, we are reminded how easily Palestine can disappear from the news while its people continue to endure unimaginable loss. That is precisely why our stories must travel further and louder this year. At a time when silence is imposed on our existence, and our grief is treated as background noise, cinema becomes more than art; it becomes presence, memory, and resistance. Through Palestine Cinema Days Around the World 2026, we gather not only to screen films but to affirm that the Palestinian narrative cannot be erased.” Dir. Kassem Hawal 1982 | 72 min | Palestine Arabic with English subtitles Music by: Ziad Rahbani Starring: Paul Matar and Hanan Hajj Ali Based on Ghassan Kanafani’s novella, Return to Haifa is set in 1967, when some Palestinian refugees living in the newly occupied territories could visit their homes before their expulsion from them in 1948. Saeed and Safiyya return to Haifa hoping to discover something about the child they left behind nearly two decades ago, and they discover their son has been adopted by an Israeli couple and now serves in the army.