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Rawy is a newly founded collective of passionate film explorers on a mission to cultivate a community around independent SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) films. Rawy aims to scout raw talents and untold stories, bringing them to life on the big screen through curating pop-up events in iconic arthouse cinemas internationally and locally.
Rawy presents: Between my Mind and I
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I’ve spent a long time away, could I ever go back home?
Between My Mind and I is a shorts programme that begins right where the creative block often takes hold. It explores the many ways we fragment our minds, and how we yearn for comfort in our imaginations. Whether by confiding in a friend during isolation, or dreaming of a time back when our skin was warm and our bodies smelled of the sea, struggling to shake the part of our mind that always leaves us in fear: could we ever go back home?
In Kingdom of strangers, Ali and Yaffa navigate the displacement of exile on the California coast, longing to reclaim the fading sensory landscape of the Arab Mediterranean cities they left behind. Don’t Be Gone, Little Bird examines generational disconnect through Rima’s time-travel journey to 1930s Palestine, where confronting ancestral history becomes the prerequisite for understanding what "going back home" truly means. The Badaro Complex frames the search for home as an internal struggle for creative belonging, reflecting the displacement felt when trying to locate oneself within the film world. This My Best Life captures a fleeting ideal of home rooted in childhood, preserving an innocent day at the beach as a sanctuary against time and distance. Finally, Karun the Longest River of Iran confronts the pain of returning to an origin point marked by tragedy, navigating the flow of memory back to the physical space where lives and histories were violently severed.
Kingdom of Strangers (Randa Ali, Egypt 2023, 15', Fiction, Arabic with English subtitles)
Don't Be Long, Little Bird (Reem Jubran, USA/Palestine 2025, 23', Fiction, English & Arabic with English subtitles)
This My Best Life (Tadeo Boustany, Lebanon 2024, 9', Fiction, Arabic with English subtitles)
Karun the Longest River of Iran (Sahand Sarhaddi, Iran/ Switzerland /Finland 2024, 19', Documentary, Persian with English subtitles)
The Badaro Complex (Adam Mabrouk, Lebanon 2026, 10', Fiction, English & Arabic with English subtitles )
