TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 1

This screening will have a rush line. If you are looking for a ticket wait in the rush line. If you have a ticket, your seat will be held until 15 minutes before showtime. After that, we can’t guarantee your spot, and it may be offered to guests in the rush line.

All That's Left of You

Duration: 146 min Director: Cherien Dabis Genre: Drama • Year: 2025
Country: Germany, Cyprus, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jordan, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia Languages: Arabic with English Subtitles

Description:
All That’s Left of You is a powerful multigenerational family saga by Cherien Dabis that traces the enduring impact of the Nakba across three generations of a Palestinian family. The film opens in 1988 in the West Bank, where teenage Noor participates in an uprising. His mother Hanan breaks the fourth wall, guiding viewers back through time to reveal the roots of Noor’s defiance. The story travels to 1948 Jaffa and the Nakba, where Noor’s grandfather Sharif resists fleeing as Israeli forces expel Palestinians from their homes. His son Salim grows up under occupation, navigating the trauma of exile and the weight of a father's choices. The film portrays the personal costs of colonial violence while honoring Palestinian resilience and steadfast humanity. Anchored by an all-star cast, All That’s Left of You offers a rare and deeply emotional portrayal of Palestinian life, history, and memory—told through the lens of family, resistance, and the desire to hold onto what remains.

Cast: Cherien Dabis, Saleh Bakri, Adam Bakri, Mohammad Bakri, Maria Zreik, Muhammad Abed
Awards: Sundance
More Info: Letterboxd

Co-presented by:

Watermelon Pictures

Muslims in Canada Archives

JAYU Festival

Film Workers For Palestine

Gallery, TIFF Lightbox

Before the closing screening of the festival, please gather with us in the gallery in the lobby to mark two years of genocide and 77 years of the ongoing Nakba. 

Since the start of the genocide on Gaza, more than 274 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed. TPFF will host a vigil to honour the martyred journalists of Gaza, the truth-tellers who courageously broadcasted to the world Israel’s atrocities committed against their people. Their courage, love for Gaza, and refusal to be silenced remind us that storytelling is an act of resistance. Together, we will remember them, mourn their loss, and carry their voices forward.

We honour the steadfast humanity of Palestinians in Gaza who teach life amidst the carnage, and we re-commit ourselves to continue advocating for justice for Palestinians.   

Full program will be announced shortly.

TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 1

Lulu
Screening with: State of Passion

Duration: 4 min Director: Labeeb Hanif Shaikh Genre: Drama Year: 2024
Country: India

Description:
Lulu follows 16-year-old Jana Zakarnekh, who returns home from school to find her cat hiding under her bed. After spending the day playing with the cat, she is woken by an unsettling noise. Tragedy strikes when she steps onto her balcony in search of her cat. The film ends with real footage of Israeli military targeting of children.

TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 1

State of Passion
Screening with: Lulu

Duration: 90 min Director: Carol Mansour & Muna Khalidi Genre: Documentary Year: 2024
Country: Lebanon, Jordan, UK, Kuwait, Palestine Languages: English and Arabic with Subtitles

ALL PROCEEDS FROM THIS SCREENING WILL BE DONATED TO GLIA - MEDICAL SUPPORT IN GAZA. We also welcome donations to the TPFF x GLIA Gaza health fundraising campaign.

Screening will be followed by a Q&A with Dr. Tarek Loubani, member of Glia’s team, and physician serving in Gaza’s hospitals.

Description:
After 43 horrific days working round the clock under constant bombardment in the emergency rooms of Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals, British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, emerged to find himself as a face of Palestinian resistance.

With news footage of him pale and shell-shocked reverberating around the world, he spoke of a catalogue of horrors from lacerated bodies, to amputations without anesthetics, orphaned children with no surviving family, and the deliberate targeting of medics and hospital facilities.

This was Ghassan’s sixth and most horrific Gaza “war”. Why does he do it? Where does he find the strength to face it again and again? How does it impact his family? How do they process the risks he takes? The answer lies simply in their shared passion: Palestine, a passion they articulate through their support of his perilous humanitarian work.

Filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi, close friends of the Abu Sittahs, share that same passion. They were waiting anxiously for Ghassan to emerge from Gaza, following a long and terrifying journey through the night, to meet him in Amman. Determined to capture his raw emotions they began filming him the moment he arrived through the door. Following him to Beirut, Amman, London, Kuwait and Dubai, they and he explore their common State of Passion.

Awards: Cairo Int’l Film Fest: Best Arab Film, Jury Award, Silver Prize for Best Palestinian Film; KARAMA HRFF: Audience Award
More Info: State of Passion

Co-presented by:

Glia - Medical Support in Gaza

Health Workers Alliance for Palestine (HAP)

World Beyond War

Cinema Politica

TIFF 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.

More Info: Visiting the Dead – Instagram

TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 1

Aisha's Story
Screening with: Visiting the Dead

Duration: 62 min Director: Elizabeth Vibert and Chen Wang Genre: Documentary Year: 2025
Country: Canada, Jordan Languages: Arabic with English Subtitles

Description:
“Food is the most precious part of Palestinian heritage.” Aisha Azzam and her husband started their family grain mill in Baqa’a refugee camp, Jordan, 35 years ago. She treasures her role in safeguarding culture by milling the wheat, grains, and herbs essential to Palestinian cuisine. Through food, Aisha traces the story of Palestinian displacement and rebuilding family and community in a refugee camp. Harvesting, milling, cooking, and feasts ground the film's arc of displacement, steadfastness and resistance. In Aisha's words, “Food is what keeps us together as Palestinians.”
Aisha’s story intimately captures the loss, beauty, and resistance that define Palestinian lives.

Awards: Hot Docs 2025 (Audience Award); DOXA 2025; Amman Int’l Film Festival
More Info: Aisha's Story

Co-presented by:

Hot Docs

Toronto Arab Film Festival

Planet in Focus

Mayworks Festival

East End Acts for Palestine

Spadina-Fort York for Palestine

Workers Action Centre

Gallery, TIFF Lightbox

From the olive tree to the key of return, Palestinian symbols carry powerful stories of identity, memory, and resistance. Co-hosted with Learn Palestine, participants in this interactive workshop for youth, will explore the meanings behind some of the most important Palestinian cultural symbols through conversation, games, art-making.

The workshop kicks off with a gallery walk, where youth will follow clues to match each symbol with its history and meaning. Together, we’ll go over the answers and dive deeper into the stories behind them. Then, we’ll test everyone’s knowledge with a lively round of a trivia game that makes learning fun and collaborative.

Finally, youth get creative by designing their own symbols that they can personalize and turn into something fun that they can wear on their clothes or hang in their room—a unique connection to Palestinian culture and identity.

Recommended ages 8+

Please message tpff.submissions@gmail.com if fees are not unaffordable. 

UNSILENCED: Anti-Palestinian Racism Shorts+
TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 1

The Silence They Taught Us
Screening with: Other Unsilenced films

Director: Paula Sahyoun Genre: Documentary Short Year: 2025
Country: Canada Languages: English, Arabic

TPFF is proud to present three original works created by local Palestinian filmmakers. The films were developed, workshopped, filmed and produced through the 2025 TPFF Film Residency. After an exciting year-long process, TPFF presents the world premieres of these incredible films. Two of the films were produced with the financial support of the Canadian government and the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association in partnership with TPFF to explore the themes of anti-Palestinian racism. The film Exception was added to this collection to round out the understanding of the manifestation of APR, which impacts so many in our community.

Description:
The Silence They Taught Us is an autobiographical documentary short following Paula, a Palestinian-Canadian professional in Toronto, as she confronts the cost of silence in the face of anti-Palestinian racism.

Raised by a father born after the Nakba, exiled to Lebanon and Egypt before coming to Canada, Paula inherited a legacy shaped by displacement, resilience, and caution. She grew up believing that safety lay in education, professionalism, and keeping her Palestinianness private—a strategy born of survival, but one that has distanced Palestinians in the diaspora from each other and from their struggle.

The film explores the systematic suppression and backlash faced by Palestinians and their allies in Canada, revealing how an environment of fear has been cultivated to silence voices, particularly in professional spaces, with the threat of lost livelihoods weaponized against Palestinians in exchange for silence and compliance.

As violence against Palestinians escalates, Paula begins to unlearn the protectionist logic she was raised with, embracing the necessity of being loudly, visibly, and proudly Palestinian—especially in professional environments where silence has long been the norm. Both personal and political, The Silence They Taught Us is a reflection on generational protectionism and a call to action: that reclaiming voice and visibility can strengthen and unite the community in the fight for liberation.

More Info: The Young Won’t Forget

This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, and the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association in partnership with Toronto Palestine Film Festival

Co-presented by:

Watermelon Pictures

Regards palestiniens

Arab Canadian Lawyers Association

Independent Jewish Voices Canada

This film will be screening with Paula Sahyoun’s “The Silence They Taught Us”, Rimah Jabr’s “You’ve Seen it on TV”, Rodrigue Hammal’s “Exception” and Sara Balkis’ “Between the Silence & the Noise”

UNSILENCED: Anti-Palestinian Racism Shorts+
TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 1

Between the Silence & the Noise
Screening with: Other Unsilenced films

Duration: 10 min Director: Sara Balkis Genre: Drama Year: 2025
Country: Canada Languages: English, Arabic

TPFF is proud to present three original works created by local Palestinian filmmakers. The films were developed, workshopped, filmed and produced through the 2025 TPFF Film Residency. After an exciting year-long process, TPFF presents the world premieres of these incredible films. Two of the films were produced with the financial support of the Canadian government and the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association in partnership with TPFF to explore the themes of anti-Palestinian racism. The film Exception was added to this collection to round out the understanding of the manifestation of APR, which impacts so many in our community.

Description:
Julia, a young Lebanese-Canadian journalism student, lives with and cares for her reserved grandfather Antoine. After attending a class on the Lebanese Civil War, she is moved by her professor’s stories and images—especially one photograph of a woman who seems strangely familiar.

Her questions unsettle her professor, who evades answering. Determined to uncover the truth, Julia searches through old documents and photos at home. When her grandfather returns from his evening stroll, Julia reaches out for the first time to ask about his past in Lebanon—and finally learns the hidden fate of her grandmother.

A moving short about memory, silence, and intergenerational trauma.

Cast: Tracy Hawchar, Hanna El-Sayyagh, Petre Batakliev
More Info: Canva site

“This project has been made possible in part by the Toronto Palestine Film Festival during the 2025 Residency”

Co-presented by:

Watermelon Pictures

Regards palestiniens

Arab Canadian Lawyers Association

Independent Jewish Voices Canada

This film will be screening with Paula Sahyoun’s “The Silence They Taught Us”, Rimah Jabr’s “You’ve Seen it on TV”, Rodrigue Hammal’s “Exception” and Sara Balkis’ “Between the Silence & the Noise”

UNSILENCED: Anti-Palestinian Racism Shorts+
TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 1

You’ve Seen it on TV
Screening with: Other Unsilenced films

Duration: 18 min Director: Rimah Jabr Genre: Dark Dramedy Year: 2025
Country: Canada Languages: English and Arabic with Subtitles

TPFF is proud to present three original works created by local Palestinian filmmakers. The films were developed, workshopped, filmed and produced through the 2025 TPFF Film Residency. After an exciting year-long process, TPFF presents the world premieres of these incredible films. Two of the films were produced with the financial support of the Canadian government and the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association in partnership with TPFF to explore the themes of anti-Palestinian racism. The film Exception was added to this collection to round out the understanding of the manifestation of APR, which impacts so many in our community.

Description:
A graduate student is absurdly interrogated by a stalker and his two assistants over an old social media post. But there are strong similarities to a play he is acting in. As Zain’s interrogation plays out over 18 tense minutes, the line between fiction and reality blurs, and he slowly realizes everything he does is being watched—leaving him to wonder who is truly observing.

The film takes an abstract approach to themes of censorship and erasure, deliberately avoiding specific names, places, or historical events. Zain’s story unfolds within a surreal, theatrical realm, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in its emotional and political currents, untethered from any fixed time or geography—and to question whether he is concealing or revealing the truth.

Cast: Ameer Idreis, Mark Cassidy, Iris Rhian, Aaron White, Nada Abu Saleh, Kari Pederson, Kate Lushington, Robert McNeely.
DoP: Gui Morilha
Awards: Work in Progress Presentation
More Info: Rimah Jabr

This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association and Charles Street Video in partnership with Toronto Palestine Film Festival

Co-presented by:

Watermelon Pictures

Regards palestiniens

Arab Canadian Lawyers Association

Independent Jewish Voices Canada

This film will be screening with Paula Sahyoun’s “The Silence They Taught Us”, Rimah Jabr’s “You’ve Seen it on TV”, Rodrigue Hammal’s “Exception” and Sara Balkis’ “Between the Silence & the Noise”

UNSILENCED: Anti-Palestinian Racism Shorts+
TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 1

Exception
Screening with: Other Unsilenced films

Duration: 32 min Director: Rodrigue Hammal Genre: Drama Year: 2024
Country: Canada, United States Languages: English

TPFF is proud to present three original works created by local Palestinian filmmakers. The films were developed, workshopped, filmed and produced through the 2025 TPFF Film Residency. After an exciting year-long process, TPFF presents the world premieres of these incredible films. Two of the films were produced with the financial support of the Canadian government and the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association in partnership with TPFF to explore the themes of anti-Palestinian racism. The film Exception was added to this collection to round out the understanding of the manifestation of APR, which impacts so many in our community.

Description:
When a leaked video of his lecture goes viral, a Palestinian professor faces a difficult choice: stay silent to preserve his career, or speak out and risk it all.

Through his dilemma, Exception explores the tensions of visibility, professional risk, and the deep personal costs of challenging anti-Palestinian racism in North American institutions.

Cast: Waleed Zuaiter, Matt Biedel, Carla Valentine
Awards: Toronto Shorts International Film Festival
More Info: Watermelon Pictures

Co-presented by:

Watermelon Pictures

Regards palestiniens

Arab Canadian Lawyers Association

Independent Jewish Voices Canada

This film will be screening with Paula Sahyoun’s “The Silence They Taught Us”, Rimah Jabr’s “You’ve Seen it on TV”, Rodrigue Hammal’s “Exception” and Sara Balkis’ “Between the Silence & the Noise”

Petra Restaurant, Mississauga

Petra Restaurant
1100 Burnhamthorpe Rd W, Mississauga

Sahtain! Take a culinary trip through Palestine's traditional breakfast cuisine and enjoy a wide array of delicious dishes with our very welcoming TPFF community. Join us on Sunday, September 28 11:00 am for our always popular Sahtain! Brunch at Petra Restaurant. Worth the trip to Mississauga! Tickets are expected to sell fast! Get your tickets as soon as possible to guarantee admission. Vegetarian friendly. Sahtain! Brunch is generously sponsored by Petra Restaurant!