The Hippodrome will present this multi award-winning documentary with post-screening discussion to mark Refugee Week, which for 2025, has the theme: “Community as a Superpower”.

A Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance between Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.

Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families - the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free.  This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance and a search for a path towards equality and justice.

Winner: Academy Best Documentary Feature, International Documentary Film Festival Audience Award, Berlin International Film Festival Documentary Award and Audience Award, European Film Awards, National Society of Film Critics Awards etc.  100% Rotten Tomatoes

After the screening we will have a discussion in the Hippodrome on issues raised by the film.  

Chair: Prof. Samuel Spiegel, International Development Professor at The University of Edinburgh (School of Social and Political Science) and member of the Jewish Staff Network and Jews for a Just Peace. 

Panellists: Nada Shawa: is a Palestinian dancer and writer from Gaza. She has performed at multiple and International arts and culturural festivals her dance and poetry. Her first book of prose and poetry, 'Indigenous Soul: Gaza and Me' was published in 2024 helping a charity in Gaza. She is scheduled to perform at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe with Janis Mackay 'Mending Nets' including dance, poetry and storytelling, after a successful premier in 2024.

Dr Livnat Konopyny Decleve British Academy International Fellow at The School of Social and Political Science at The University of Edinburgh. She is a political anthropologist working on the Jewish radical left, and on alternative political imagination in Israel/Palestine and abroad. She is a co-convenor of Anthropology of Peace, Conflict, and Security network at EASA

Presented in partnership with the Park Gallery art exhibition: ‘Somewhere to Stay’ by Diana Forster - the true story of how Diana’s mother, Anna Sokulska Forster, was forced to leave her home in eastern Poland during World War II. After being sent to Siberian labour camps by Russian soldiers, Anna’s long 

After being sent to Siberian labour camps by Russian soldiers, Anna’s long journey to safety took her through Uzbekistan, Iran, and East Africa before finally settling in the UK.  Park Gallery, Callendar House, Falkirk to 7 September (£FREE). 

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