Film and writers’ festivals, concerts, art, standup comedy, lectures, new books, art residencies and writing workshops …TMR World Picks run the gamut… We welcome your suggestions: editor@themarkaz.org
TMR
Palestinian Film Festival Australia
May 1–11, various venues — more info
The 13th Palestinian Film Festival Australia unveils the latest collection of films, exploring Palestinian existence, identity, struggle, and resilience. This year’s lineup includes feature films and documentaries such as From Ground Zero, 22 short films made in Gaza by the Mashawari Fund, A Fidai Story about the looting and appropriation of Palestinian archives in 1982 Beirut, and the drama The Teacher, directed by Farah Nabulsi, among other films. The nationwide festival, with screenings in Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, and Melbourne, takes place at a time when Palestinian cinema is under attack, in Australia. Earlier this month, a charity screening of the joint Palestinian and Israeli documentary No Other Land (2024) was cancelled in Melbourne, after the cinema received complaints and threats. The charity screening organized by the Jewish Council of Australia was to raise funds in aid of the West Bank village in the documentary, Masafer Yatta, which Jewish settlers and the IDF have routinely attacked. The event’s organizer Sophie Kagan talked about the canceling of the charity screening to The Guardian: “What does that say about freedom of expression in Australia, that an Oscar-winning film made by an Israeli-Palestinian collective, which is being screened in Israel, is censored in such a blatant way?” The fund-raiser and screening took place in another Melbourne cinema. Incidents like this make the Palestinian Film Festival Australia’s purpose “to build intercultural understanding and promote Palestinian life, art, and culture” vitally important.
Transnational Series Hosts Jonas Elbousty
May 3, Brookline Smith, Online — more info
Join this virtual event with translator Jonas Elbousty to discuss and celebrate the release of Tales of Tangier by acclaimed Moroccan author Mohamed Choukri. This collection marks the first-time translation of all the short stories by Choukri into English, and brings his remarkable work together in one volume. “Choukri is one of Morocco’s most revered figures,” As Noshin Bokth, from The New Arab, has written, “To have his words translated is to have the privilege to view the inner world of his intellect and the obscured landscapes of Tangier.”
2025 Pen World Voices Festival
Translation on the Line: Censorship, Power, and the Politics of Language
May 3, New York, US — more info
Co-presented by the PEN America Translation Committee, featuring translators Michael Eskin, Sawad Hussain, and Monica Cure alongside award-winning translator and event moderator Sandra Smith, this discussion will ask what happens when a translation threatens the status quo and what are the choices translators face when navigating political pressure, cultural sensitivities, or institutional demands. Different pressures have shaped translations throughout history, from redactions by authoritarian regimes to edits driven by publishers’ fears. This discussion will explore the complex choices between creative choice, fidelity, and censorship that translators at times navigate. Last year’s PEN World Voices Festival was canceled after writers withdrew from the festival in protest of the organization’s lack of response to the ongoing war and genocide in Gaza. Interestingly, when Salman Rushdie announced the first annual World Voices Festival in 2005, he criticized, “our dumbed-down, homogenized, frightened culture, under the thumbs of leaders who seem to think of themselves as God’s anointed and of power as their divine right; it is harder to make such exalted claims for mere wordsmiths. Harder, but no less necessary … one has the sense of things shutting down, of barriers being erected, of that dialogue being stifled precisely when we should be doing our best to amplify it.” As the deafening silence about Gaza continues writers’ organizations and writers everywhere should take his words to heart.
Book Launch: Water by Rumi, Translated by Haleh Liza Gafori
May 6, Brookline Smith Bookstore, Massachusetts, US & YouTube — more info
Water by Rumi (NYRB Classics, 2025), serves as a sequel to Haleh Liza Gafori’s earlier translations of Rumi found in Gold (NYRB Classics, 2022). In this new collection, also published by the New York Review of Books, Gafori presents a fresh selection of works by the great Persian mystic. Gafori is an acclaimed vocalist and musician as well as a gifted linguist and poet. Hers is the work, as the poet Marilyn Hacker has said, “of someone who is at once an acute and enamored reader of the original Farsi text, a dedicated miner of context and backstory, and, best of all, a marvelous poet in English.”
Panel discussion: Foreign Media Access to Gaza
May 6, Frontline Club, London — more info
Over a year ago, more than 50 journalists and foreign correspondents signed an open letter calling on Israel and Egypt to provide “free and unfettered access to Gaza for all foreign media.” It stated that the need for comprehensive on-the-ground reporting is “imperative” and deplore the fact that “foreign reporters are still being denied access to the territory, outside of the rare and escorted trips with the Israeli military.” Palestinian journalists and media workers have reported from inside Gaza since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October. Still, hundreds have been killed, injured, or gone missing. The Foreign Press Association has more recently urged Israel to lift the ban on Gaza access for all journalists. It is still impossible to report from Gaza as a foreign correspondent.
Hassan Blasim & Jonathan Wright Discuss Sololand
May 12, Storysmith Bookshop, Bristol, UK — more info
Author Hassan Blasim and translator Jonathan Wright will discuss their new collection of three Blasim novellas in Sololand (Comma Press, 2025), with translator Basma Ghalayini. Doors are at 18:30 with the event starting at 19:00. The event finishes at 21:00.
Open Call: Two-month Art-research Residency, Autumn 2025, Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte Onlus, Biella, Italy
May 14, deadline — more info
The Ramallah-based A.M. Qattan Foundation and UNIDEE— the University of Ideas — announce an open call for a two-month research residency at Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte Onlus in Biella, Italy for autumn 2025. Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte Onlus is a program of artists’ residencies for art and social transformation, open to artists and professionals from all over the world. It aims at providing instruments for “artivators” — that is subjects working at the boundaries between artistic practices, processes of social change, and collaborations with communities external to the art world. These should weave together moments of interdisciplinary research, exchange of knowledge and practical activities. The program’s objective is to provide the participants with the inspiration, motivation, strategies, and instruments to activate, develop, or strengthen artistic initiatives based on the involvement of local ecologies. The deadline to apply is May 14, 2025.
Book Talk with Iman Mersal
May 16, Brookline Smith, Massachusetts, US — more info
Iman Mersal is set to discuss her two personal works of creative nonfiction, retracing and exploring the lives of women. Motherhood and Its Ghosts, (Transit Books, 2025) and Traces of Enayat (And Other Stories, 2024), both translated by Robin Moger. Sifting through the archives of motherhood, including journal entries, photographs, and the writings that have informed Mersal’s own poetic practice, Motherhood and Its Ghosts privileges questions over answers and drifting over arriving. It is a literary approach that allows a form of motherhood to exist unbounded. Meanwhile in Traces of Enayat, winner of the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award, Mersal retraces the mysterious life and erasure of Egyptian literature’s tragic heroine, Enayat al-Zayyat.
The Egyptian Jazz Projekt: A Celebration of Halim
May 19, Holborn, London — more info
Arts Canteen revives Egypt’s legendary vocalist Abdel Halim Hafez with a performance by the HarfousH Jazz Band, led by Ahmed Harfoush, who is set to perform the timeless nostalgic songs of Abdel Halim Hafez from his 1950s and 1960s film and studio recordings. Abdel Halim Hafez, also known as Al-Andaleeb Al-Asmar (The Black Nightingale), was famous beyond the Egyptian arts scene. Dubbed the “King of Arabic Music,” “The Voice of the People,” “The Son of the Revolution,” and “King of Emotions and Feelings,” his songs were masterpieces of collaborative efforts by some of the Arab world’s best poets and composers.
Muslims Don’t Matter: Sayeeda Warsi in Conversation
May 22, The Conduit, London, UK — more info
In this urgent conversation, Sayeeda Warsi, Britain’s first Muslim Cabinet minister, Conservative peer, and outspoken campaigner, is set to look inside the deep-seated biases that allow anti-Muslim racism to thrive in public life, policymaking, and everyday society. From the far-right violence of 2024 to the targeting of Muslim voices during the Gaza conflict, Warsi exposes how Islamophobia has become Britain’s bigotry blind spot. Along with David Baddiel, Warsi presents the podcast A Muslim and a Jew Go There.
TMR Exhibition: Art of the Palestinian Poster at P21 Gallery — Shubbak Festival
May 23—June 14, London — more info
An evocative exhibition showcases the resurgence of Palestinian political posters as powerful works of art and vital campaigning tools during the war on Gaza for Shubbak 2025. Curated by TMR’s literary editor Malu Halasa, the collection includes anti-war works by the original members of New Vision collective — artists fundamental to the creation of Palestinian modern art Vera Tamari, Sliman Mansour, Tayseer Barakat, and Nabil Anani — alongside contemporary posters by Gazan artist Hazem Harb, popular Lebanese musician Khaled El Haber, and Palestinian new generation poster-maker Haneen Nazzal, among many others. This collection of artful posters, originally from the Zawyeh Gallery of Ramallah and Dubai and never before exhibited in the UK, appear with posters for Palestine hacked into London bus shelters by the anonymous activist group Protest Stencil; the stark infographic posters by the decolonizing collective Visualizing Palestine; and posters that pro-Palestinian protestors downloaded from the internet, printed, and carried on demonstrations. A poster roundtable discussion on June 11 at P21, with Palestinian artist Vera Tamari, Visualizing Palestine’s Aline Batarseh, West Bank curator Nadine Aranki, and Professor Dina Matar from SOAS Centre of Palestinian Studies, will discuss art in Palestinian resistance and the political and aesthetic impact of Palestinian political posters.
25th Rotterdam Arab Film Festival
May 28–June 1, various venues in Rotterdam, Netherlands — more info
The concert and multimedia performance The Photograph Changed Me, which opens the 25th edition of the Rotterdam Arab Film Festival, celebrates the life and legacy of the Egyptian chanteuse and cultural icon Umm Kulthum (1898–1975). The collaboration between Marmoucha Orchestra and the composer, singer, and filmmaker Toni Geitani shows off not only the singer’s life “but her remarkable ability to listen,” according to, the director of the Rotterdam Arab Film Festival Rosh Abdelfatah. He continues, “More than 50 years after her death, Umm Kulthum remains an indispensable part of the daily musical landscape in the Arab world.” A talk before the performance, with Geitani and author and dramaturge Willem Bruls, will examine the Aida story in Egyptian cinema and Western opera and representations of what has come to be known as “the Orient.” After its opening night, the citywide festival continues with five days of screenings of Middle Eastern contemporary and retrospective films, music, and art.
The Markaz Review Workshop: Writing From the Center of the World
May 31, 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m., Shubbak Festival, Arab British Center, London—more info
Whether you’re a seasoned or emerging writer, join TMR’s daylong writing workshop that aims to inspire and empower writers to engage with the Middle East and the wider world through the lens of creative expression. During this event, you will also get a chance to meet TMR’s editorial team, including editor-in-chief Jordan Elgrably, managing editor Rana Asfour, and literary editor Malu Halasa. Learn about TMR’s mission to provide critical and creative perspectives on SWANA arts, and discover how TMR has become a platform for the voices of Gaza, queer fiction from the region, and literary work that challenges and reshapes perceptions of and in the region. Event highlights include an introduction to The Markaz Review (10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.), a workshop on critical writing and reviewing (12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.), a workshop on fiction and literary nonfiction (3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.), and a workshop on translation and publishing (4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.). Although the event is free, booking is essential.
