Saeed Taji Farouky: “Strange Cities Are Familiar”
The filmmaker behind "Tell Spring Not to Come This Year" and "A Thousand Fires" journeys with Mohammad Bakri to find home.
Saeed Taji Farouky
Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian - British filmmaker who has been producing work around themes of conflict, human rights, and colonialism since 2005. His latest documentary, A Thousand Fires premiered as the opening film in Directors Fortnight of the Locarno Film Festival 2021 where it won the Marco Zucchi award for most innovative documentary. His previous documentary Tell Spring Not to Come This Year premiered at the Berlinale 2015 where it won the Audience Choice Panorama award and the Amnesty Human Rights Award. His films focus on exile and the lingering trauma of conflict. He tells intimate, personal stories with an emphasis on humanism, and its mirror image: surrealism. He is also an educator who runs the radical SLG Film School in South London, a free film course for participants from backgrounds underrepresented in the film industry to develop creative, unconventional approaches to moving image work.