Palestinian Director Majdi El Omari Speaks on His Award-Winning Film

‘Mar Mama’, the latest film by Palestinian director Majdi El Omari, delves into what many parents would find unthinkable but is a daily reality for millions of Palestinians: navigating the trauma of a child losing one of their parents in the midst of war. The story is deeply personal for El Omari, who lost his wife and had to find a way to comfort his daughter in their shared grief.

The film, which recently won Best Arabic Short Film at the Sharjah International Film Festival, centres on a young girl in the West Bank haunted by her mother’s death. Her father attempts to distract her from the surrounding violence by retreating into fantasies, creating a stop-motion film together to the backdrop of Israel’s brutal military occupation.

"Films can show you what social media or a news piece cannot," El Omari tells SceneNowUAE. "They take you closer to the people, touch your emotions, and drive you to dig deeper into what’s happening. News is transitory and easy to ignore, but film can make you rethink."

Although intended as a universal exploration of how parents protect their children under unimaginable circumstances, the film is firmly rooted in the Palestinian experience. It was shot in a village near Bethlehem, where El Omari teaches filmmaking at Dar al-Kalima University. The story itself draws on the legend of Mar Girgis, venerated among Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike as Sayidna Al Khader, a figure of protection and resistance against evil.

Born in Kuwait to a father from Jaffa who was expelled during the Nakba, El Omari grew up in Egypt hearing stories of a homeland he had never seen. "Growing up in Cairo, I was always reminded that I was Palestinian," he says. "My father’s stories of Jaffa created an intense connection to a place I had never visited."

El Omari turned to cinema as an outlet to express his identity, studying film at the Cairo Institute of Cinema where he was taught by the legendary Egyptian director Youssef Chahine. "Exploring the Palestinian experience in my work wasn’t a choice, it was something I was compelled to do. I love poetry but can’t write it. I love painting but can’t paint. With film, I found a way to express myself."

After working in Egypt’s film industry, El Omari moved to Canada, where he directed numerous short and feature films before moving to Palestine in 2016. His work often focuses on themes of alienation, the desire to communicate, and the search for solace in the face of political and social upheaval, earning selections at leading international festivals.

While his work has personally seen critical success, El Omari is frustrated by the film industry’s treatment of Palestinian filmmakers as a whole. “I feel much of the film industry’s interest is tokenistic,” El Omari says. “While my films have explored these themes, it’s disheartening to see how some of my students’ works are overlooked by festivals simply because they don’t conform to traditional narratives of Palestine as solely defined by exile, oppression and war.”

For El Omari, winning the best short film award was a vindication of the two years of financial struggle undertaken by him and his team to have the film completed. Crucially, he hopes that it will allow him to secure funding for his next project, a feature film titled ‘The Woman of the Bees’.