PALESTINIAN FILM FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM 2025

Marking the 10-year anniversary of the Palestinian Film Festival Amsterdam, the 2025 edition Virtual Remains takes Gaza as its central focus.

In the words of contemporary poet Huda Fakhreddine:
Gaza is a locus and ethos; it is a signpost in place that has also become a source point of time. And as readers of Arabic poetry know well, a place can have agency. It can become all of time, past, present, and future. Gaza is our eternal talal, our oracle-ruins. [...] It will retell all history before and direct all history after it.

With the abundance of dystopian and apocalyptic images saturating viewers’ senses for two years by the time we gather in October, Virtual Remains opens up the question: how do we as receivers of this image stream inhabit imaginaries of Gaza and of Palestine, and how do they, as locus and ethos, inhabit us? Starting here, the 2025 festival is a reflection on virtuality in all its dimensions: as representation, imagination, index, projection, embodiment, and the truth claims attached to (moving) images.

Alongside the rich programme of screenings and parallel events at LAB111, this year the festival is happy to once again host a souk (bazaar) with arts and crafts featuring Palestine. The market will take over LAB111’s downstairs expo space and is free for public entry. A full list of souk vendors will be announced on the PFFA social media.