Pressley Grzybowski
Viewpoints Editor
On Thursday, Nov. 5, a handful of students gathered in Lean Lecture Hall from 7-9 p.m. for a film screening, poetry reading and book signing featuring Oscar-nominated & BAFTA-winning Palestinian-American filmmaker, poet and writer Hind Shoufani.
Shoufani was introduced by assistant professor of English Marlo Starr, who praised Shoufani’s poetic talent.
“Hind’s fierce and even irreverent poetic voice explores feminine embodiment, sexuality, desire, grief and loss, piercing through romanticized and abstract generalizations of Arab women’s experience and of the collective suffering of Palestinians,” Starr said.
The event focused on a 24-minute short film titled “The Present.” Co-written & edited by Shoufani, the film follows a father and daughter living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who must travel into town to purchase a gift.
The film centers on Yusef and his daughter, Yasmine, who set out to pick up a gift for Yasmine’s mother. Their journey starts in a warm family home, but this setting contrasts sharply with an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) checkpoint.
Yusef is treated with hostility, forced to wait in a small cage with other men as soldiers deliberate his passage. After being released, the pair travel on foot to retrieve a new refrigerator. Upon returning to the IDF checkpoint at sunset, Yusef is questioned, and his fridge and groceries are searched.
The fridge does not fit through the metal detector, and soldiers insist he must leave it behind. The film concludes with Yasmine pushing the fridge through a restricted area, symbolizing resilience amidst chaos, as the pair make their way home after an emotional ordeal.
After the film ended, Hind took the stage in a bejeweled top and glittery jeans for a Q&A. One student asked what the casting process was like for the film, and Shoufani explained that the actors who made up the film came from a variety of different backgrounds, but that they were all Arab, even those who portrayed IDF soldiers.
“It is a combination of amateur actors or non-actors with more professional ones, and [even] the [IDF] soldiers are all Arab. So the soldiers are not Israeli Jewish citizens … they are all Arabs who speak Hebrew, and some of the Hebrew at the end was dubbed … because their accents, I think, were not fully 100%.” Shoufani said.
Later, Shoufani discussed the film’s intended audience and purpose.
“This is meant to be a bit more of a universal story … [where you] could see the reality day-to-day in like a likable character without it being overtly politicized. You know, nobody’s making big speeches, or nobody’s talking politics; we are not necessarily preaching, but you see through the day-to-day,” Shoufani said.
When asked what Yasmine’s character represents on a broader level, Shoufani explained that she was meant to represent the daily humiliations that parents endure in the occupied territories of the Middle East.
“You know, when you are a child, you look up to your dad, mom … [Yasmine] has to witness [her dad] going through this embarrassing humiliation of taking off half his clothes, sitting on the floor in a cage, which is also real, and almost dying,” Shoufani said. “I think that is what we were trying to do with this child character: show how it affects them to watch their parents struggle for dignity in the simple day-to-day things. You know, they grow up too fast, these kids, but at the same time, they have, like, an inordinate amount of internal strength.”
The night ended with Shoufani reading a few excerpts from her most recent poetry collection, “Dark Star Requiem,” which was awarded a 2026 Arab American National Museum Book Award. The first poem she read was titled “Lamentations in the Metropole,” a piece about Shoufani missing her boyfriend as she watches a “live-streamed genocide.” The second piece that Shoufani read was inspired by a terrorist attack in Germany where a vehicle was driven into a Christmas market, killing and injuring many.
Copies of “Dark Star Requiem” were available for purchase for Shoufani to sign as students, staff and faculty alike left Wishart after a night of poetry, prose and Palestine.
