A World Not Ours

An ironic, bittersweet, and utterly irresistible documentary about life in the Palestinian refugee camp Ein el-Helwe in Lebanon. The film was screened at Arab Film Days in 2013.

Danish-Palestinian filmmaker Mehdi Fleifel returns to the refugee camp he visited every summer as a child. He aims to show that a Palestinian refugee camp is not what we might expect. The year is 2010, it’s the World Cup, and the picture Fleifel paints defies our assumptions. We get to know his stubborn and ambitious grandfather, his friend Abu Iyad, who has been a member of the PLO since the age of seven, and his uncle Hassan, who is slowly losing his sanity due to life in the camp. The tone of A World Not Ours is not marked by the desperation and misery one might expect but rather by a fascinating, humor-filled melancholy. We see how the residents manage surprisingly well and are full of good spirits, while also contending with a pervasive sense of despair and frustration over the Palestinian resistance struggle.

Returning to Palestine seems out of reach, yet continuing to live within Lebanese society feels impossible. The film is a unique portrait from within, forcing us to view the Palestinian refugee issue from a new perspective. Thanks to its fantastic character portrayals, enhanced by perfectly placed music, A World Not Ours captivates us from the very first frame.

The film has won awards worldwide, including at the Berlin Film Festival and CPH:DOX in Denmark.

Archive 2013

Director

Mahdi Fleifel (b. 1979) is a Danish-Palestinian filmmaker. A World Not Ours (2012) is his first feature-length documentary. Since then, he has made several critically acclaimed short films. To A Land Unknown (2024) is his first fiction film.

This film is part of