About

Soura Film Festival is a Berlin-based queer film festival that sheds light on cinematic talents from the SWANA (South West Asia & North Africa) region.

Soura—which means ‘image’ in Arabic, is about sharing a vision of life that is poignant, defiant, and unique.

The festival’s mission is to create a safe and welcoming space for filmmakers whose creative vision has challenged heteronormativity and patriarchal environments, and have explored queerness and what it represents to them. Queerness, as seen by the festival, is not exclusive to efforts related to the LGBTQ+ community, but also tackles themes such as feminism, migration and human relationships that defy oppressive social constructs. Every fight for basic human rights is our fight when it comes to seeing the world from a queer gaze.

Over the past few decades, the SWANA region has witnessed a lot of political engagement within queer communities, whether against laws that criminalize their lives or in favor of change and education. Fieldwork has been positively affecting individuals from the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and especially transgender communities, but activists have also been involved in debates that support women’s rights and the well-being of other communities treated as minorities, in an effort to normalize an anti-colonial environment that stands against imperialism.

We show our support to everyone fighting for their rights, including the ones that were forced to leave their homes for a safer future.

Soura Film Festival aims to step across borders to help filmmakers advocate for queerness through powerful storytelling. The festival reserves the right to select artistic efforts that adhere to its political frameworks and support the notion of queerness that stands with the struggles of oppressed communities everywhere in their fight for their basic rights. Therefore, given the region’s political landscape, we find it crucial to state our position against any efforts that indulge in pinkwashing and purplewashing those daily struggles and this ongoing fight for freedom.