TIFF Bell Lightbox, Cinema 1

Visiting the Dead
Screening with: Aisha’s Story

Duration: 35 min Director: Elias Issa Halabi Genre: Documentary Year: 2023
Country: Palestine Languages: Arabic with English Subtitles

Description:
Visiting the Dead is a documentary that follows Palestinian landowners as they make their annual visits to lands now trapped behind the Israeli separation wall, near the area of Jabal Abu Ghneim—today the site of the Har Homa settlement southeast of Bethlehem. These lands, once accessible and cultivated freely, are now subject to military restrictions and bureaucratic barriers imposed by the settler colonial regime.

The film captures the intimate and emotional return of families to their confiscated lands, offering a window into the lived experience of dispossession. Through personal testimonies and observational sequences, it explores how these yearly visits become acts of resistance, remembrance, and connection to a disappearing landscape.

At the heart of the film are broader themes: the ongoing processes of settler colonization, environmental degradation, the erosion of ancestral ties to land, and the shifting politics of land, identity, and futurity in Palestine. Visiting the Dead offers a grounded perspective on the slow violence of occupation and the resilience embedded in everyday Palestinian life.

Awards: Toronto Arab Film Festival; Independent Jewish Voices
More Info: Visiting the Dead – Instagram