TIFF Lightbox, Gallery

Join us as we commemorate 3rd anniversary of the genocide, the ongoing nakba in Palestine and southern Lebanon. 

Date: October 4, 2026, 6:45pm

As we celebrate the excellence of Palestine's and Lebanon's creatives, we also take a moment to pay tribute to our martyrs, our storytellers, our resisters, our rescuers and healers.  

Poetry and song will be shared in their honour as we gather in community to reflect, grieve, uplift and re-commit to ending Canadian complicity in the oppression of Palestinians and Lebanese, and Arabs across the broader region. United we will persevere. 

Performers: Musicians Hytham Farah (oud), Naghmeh Farahmand (percussion), and Isa Fara (cello). Featuring poets Sarra Malek and Roula Said. 

Bios
Hytham Farah is a classically trained Palestinian oud player based in Toronto. Drawing from the musical traditions of the Levant and Egypt, as well as classical and contemporary Palestinian compositions, his work explores the oud through both traditional and modern arrangements. He leads Qalbi Basha, an Arabic jazz and Tarab project, and regularly collaborates with artists and community initiatives across the GTA, including performances and fundraisers in support of Palestine. Follow Hytham’s music and collaborations on Instagram @hytham_farah, and Qalbi Basha at @qalbibasha.

Naghmeh Farahmand is an internationally acclaimed Persian percussionist based in Toronto. She began her musical journey in Iran under the guidance of her father, master percussionist Mahmoud Farahmand, and has performed across Europe, Asia, and North America. Since moving to Canada in 2010, she has released three albums: Unbound, A Tale of Two Cities, and Refuge. Her collaborations include Tafelmusik Orchestra, Toronto Consort, Amici Ensemble, and David Buchbinder’s The Roots of Andalucia. Her international performances include Walt Disney Concert Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Yale University. In 2025, she was a Grammy Award winner for her performance on Immersed. She also teaches and leads workshops internationally.

isa farah is a transsexual agent of chaos, cellist, composer, and agitator in Toronto's diasporic and improvised music scene. She plays heart-forward music inspired by the Iranian Radif and contemporary improvisation, with a sprinkle of pop and a dash of soft-ferality. She once thought her practice was centered on grief, but now thinks of it more simply: as offering permission to feel. An ex-academic turned bimbo, she is currently in the midst of a fellowship exploring femininity as a form of resistance in Iranian music through a transfeminist lens.

Sarra Malek is a Palestinian poet, writer, editor and spoken word performer living in the diaspora. She is co-editor of an anthology of Arab feminist writings called Min Fami: Arab feminist reflections on identity, space and resistance published by Inanna Publications in 2015, and 4 print zines called AQSAZine showcasing Muslim young women voices in Toronto, Canada. She is also a creative writing educator, workshop facilitator, and spoken word poet and band member of Haneen Biladi, along with other Palestinian-Canadian musicians. She is currently writing a fiction novel called Al-Watan about young Palestinian woman, Areen, who is on the search for the meaning of home after being displaced from her grandfather’s house in Nablus in the West Bank. She is also working on compiling her spoken word poetry in a collection called Poetical Thawra.

Roula Said is a Palestinian-Canadian artist based in Toronto. As a musician and poet, Roula sings and plays qanun, piano and percussion to accompany original songs created from Palestinian poetry and her sufi-inspired poems. She also sings traditional Arabic songs with her women’s drums and voice band, Tabiba. As an actor, she has appeared on stage in Suvendreni Lena’s play, Rubble and on screen in Ruba Nada’s charming and long-running, Sabah. For the last 2 years on May 15, Roula and Suvendreni have produced a 24 Hour Poetry Vigil commemorating the Nakba at The Theatre Centre in Toronto. With a history in dance and movement, Roula is a member of Wild Soma Collective, exploring embodiment as a world-making practice and an architecture connecting us to ourselves, each other and all of life.

TIFF Gallery

Join TPFF after the screening of Untold Intifada 1958 for a timely discussion on the experiences of Nakba denial while Palestine is experiencing an ongoing genocide. 

Date: October 4, 2026, 5:00pm

Location: TIFF Gallery, ground floor

Nakba denial has been a long-standing concern for Palestinians in Canada - however, it became front page news after the Canadian Human Rights Museum first announced and then launched its Nakba Exhibit. From statements by the Canadian Heritage Minister to opinion pieces in the Globe and Mail, our community experienced a wave of attacks for simply sharing their experiences of a well-documented and ongoing catastrophe committed against the Indigenous people of Palestine.  Nakba denial has evolved to include the denial of the livestreamed genocide in Gaza, resulting in reprisals against advocates who condemn Israel's crimes in Gaza.  

Our esteemed speakers Rana Abdulla and Raz Segal will share their experiences with Nakba and genocide denial and how they overcame the dehumanization and erasure.  Moderated by Dania Majid, the discussion will offer examples, reflections, and tools for responding to denial—on screen, in classrooms, and in community spaces. 

Speakers

Rana Abdulla is a tax accountant (CPA) who has spent decades supporting newcomers, preserving Palestinian heritage, and curating projects such as The Land Remembers, Palestine: Courage, Resilience, Resistance. She is a member of the Palestinian Content Advisory Network that reviewed content for the Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Human Rights Museum. She is also the owner of the popular Yafa Cafe in Winnipeg. 

Raz Segal is a Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University. Prof Segal was among the first in his field to name Israel’s attack on Gaza “A Textbook Case of Genocide” in October 2023. He recently settled a claim for damages against the University of Minnesota after they withdrew a job offer over his use of the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s destruction of Gaza.  

Moderator: Dania Majid, Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, Toronto Palestine Film Festival, author of Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing and Manifestations.

Join us for the book launch of Nyla Matuk's latest book "Leila and Khaled". 

This novel confronts present-day love with the trauma of the Nakba to tell the story of a scholar returning for the first time to the occupied land her family was exiled from. 

The conversation will be moderated by journalist/culture writer Richie Assaly.

Date: Sunday, October 4, 2026
Venue: TIFF Lightbox, 350 King St W
Time: 3:00 PM  (more details closer to the event)

Book signing to follow event. Purchase books via this form for a special 20% discount. (Regular priced books available at TIFF store)

The event is copresented by Anansi Press and Another Story Bookshop.

Book Description: 

Leila, a Palestinian Canadian film scholar, joins a delegation of academics on her first journey to Occupied Palestine. What begins as an intellectual pilgrimage becomes an intimate, destabilizing return to an ancestral land her family was exiled from. There, she meets Khaled—a younger Palestinian man who pulls her into a mesmeric trance of desire, curiosity, and confrontation. Their brief, charged affair unfolds in a landscape shaped by rupture and resistance, each of them bearing different inheritances of the same loss. Leila and Khaled is a love story and a reckoning—a lyrical, unflinching meditation on belonging, memory, and the enduring wounds of colonialism.        

Bios: 

NYLA MATUK was born in Winnipeg and lives in Montreal. She is the author of two critically acclaimed books of poetry: Sumptuary Laws, shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, and Stranger. She is also the editor of an anthology of poems, Resisting Canada.     

RICHIE ASSALY is a freelance journalist and culture writer in Toronto, writing about music, books, food and politics. He is also a juror for the Polaris Music Prize.

Join us for a hands-on all-ages Tatreez workshop led by Learn Palestine. Learn basic stitches, patterns, and the stories carried in each motif and make yourself a wearable item you can enjoy after the workshop.

PLEASE NOTE NEW START AND END TIME: 12:00-2:00pm

Date: Saturday October 3, 2026 and Sunday, October 4, 2026
Venue: TIFF Lightbox, 350 King St W, Gallery
Time: 12:30 PM  (more details closer to the event)

This workshop is open to all skill levels and ages including children.  Participants will be seated together based on their skills and age groups (children/youth and adults). 

Spaces are limited.  Workshop fees $15 are for the purchase of materials. If costs are a barrier to participation please email us.

Please cancel your registration if you no longer can attend. Refunds may be issued if cancelled spots are filled by other participants.

Co-Presented by our friends at Textile Museum and Learn Palestine

Drop in and enjoy the coffee, freshly-made manaeesh and some live tunes!

Join us for TPFF Sahtain! Cafe, a special edition of our beloved Sahtain! gathering, presented in collaboration with Nile Coffee & Bar and Makann.

Manakeesh will be available while quantities last

No registration required – just drop in!

Date: Sunday, October 4, 2026, 9:00am - 1:00pm

Location: Nile Coffee & Bar | 1485 Dundas St. W., Toronto

Come for the signature coffee and fresh manakeesh, stay for the live music and good company.

Performance schedule to be announced shortly

About our partners:

Nile Coffee Club is a black owned coffee brand aimed at helping you transform the ordinary act of sipping coffee into a moment of creative inspiration. Their coffee is ethically sourced from a network of small farmers in Africa and South America, and roasted in small batches.

Makann, founded in February 2026, has quickly become a Toronto go-to for Palestinian-inspired breakfast sandwiches (deliciously stuffed manaeesh). Located at 866 Bathurst St.

TPFF Presents Excentrik X NARCY: On Song, Storytelling and Worldbuilding

Doors 7:45pm Event Start: 8:15

Celebrated Alternative Arab musicians NARCY and Excentrik have been collaborators for close to 20 years. In this unique sit-down event, the two will discuss their roles in the evolving world of Arab-Forward music, the role of the artist in times of great upheaval and worldbuilding outside the reality we exist in through song and lyric. 

Sharing the stage, they invite us into the making of their latest releases, NARCY's magnus opus "To Be An (Arab)" and Excentrik's Instrumental soundtrack to Palestine "Watani77" and the perils of Identity politics in pop culture. Music and video will weave through their conversation to create an immersive experience.

They will conclude the night by spinning vinyl together — playing classics and contemporary music from Arab artists back home and in the Diaspora. 

Date: October 3, 7:30pm

Venue: TIFF Lightbox, Gallery

NARCY is a celebrated multi-hyphenate. He is commonly known as the formative Iraqi voice in Hip-Hop culture and a staunch believer in independence. His work has spanned across genres - from songs with yasiin bey and Dave Chappelle, Yo-Yo Ma and Mashrou ' Leila, Todd Rundgren and Mo Amer. His directorial work has garnered him awards, and his professorship at Concordia University have been international news making announcements, mixing the current zeitgeist in Hip-Hop with philosophy, media studies and political science. He is currently teaching a class on Drake in the Fall. He is also the co-owner of MAKTABA Bookshop in the heart of Old Montréal. 

https://www.narcy.online/

Excentrik is a SF Bay Area based Palestinian multimedia artist, producer and musician. Known as a pioneer of Arab American hip hop, his expansive body of work spans records, film scores, and experimental projects including the genre-less solo album Now Here, Nowhere. He co-produced the Arab Summit album, “Fear of an Arab Planet” alongside Narcy and Omar Offendum as well as Naima Shalhoub’s debut LP Siphr, which led to the formation of the Arabic-groove quartet, The Shadow Band. His latest album, Watani 77, is an improvised 77-minute somber ode to 77 years of Nakba, colonization and occupation in Palestine. 

www.badpalestinian.com

Co-presented by our friends at Off The Record Games Inc. and Syzygy Sounds

Join us for a post-screening panel on the life, work, and lasting influence of renowned Palestinian thinker Edward Said. 

The panel will take place immediately after the screening of Edward Said: Between Worlds. A separate ticket must be purchased to watch the film. A film ticket is not required to attend the panel. 

Date: October 3, 2026

Screening: 3:15pm (Cinema 1)

Panel: 5:15pm (Gallery Space) 

This panel, featuring  Dr, Ardi Imseis and Dr. Lara El Makaui, will be an open dialogue and discussion about Edward Said and his enduring impact on culture, politics, and society, including the Question of Palestine and beyond. The conversation will be moderated by Jerry Jareer Khouri. 

Panellists: 

Dr. Ardi Imseis is Associate Professor, Queen’s Law School, and a scholar-practitioner of public international law. He is a former UN official with UNRWA and UNHCR (2002-2014), as well as a Member of the UN commission of inquiry on Yemen (2019-2021). He has served as legal counsel and advocate in cases before the International Court of Justice, and has provided expert testimony in his personal capacity before other high-level bodies, including the UN Security Council, UN Human Rights Council and UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Among other things, he is author ofThe United Nations and the Question of Palestine (Cambridge University Press 2023), he is former Editor-in-Chief of thePalestine Yearbook of International Law (Brill; 2008-2019), and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow, Columbia Law School. Professor Imseis holds a Ph.D. (Cambridge), an LL.M. (Columbia), LL.B. (Dalhousie), and B.A. (Hons.) (Toronto).

Dr. Lara El Mekaui is a Research Fellow at the Global Migration Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University, where her work focuses on foresight and futures methodologies for migration research. She also teaches English and Communications courses at the University of Waterloo.

Lara holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Waterloo, specializing in Transnational and Decolonial Theory, and an MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. Her doctoral work at the University of Waterloo introduced the concept of “hesitant belonging” to examine belonging, generational trauma, and forced migration.

A Lebanese immigrant and Ukrainian refugee in Canada, her research examines belonging, temporality, and forced migration through creative and analytical frameworks. She is also Lead Non-Fiction Editor at The New Quarterly.

Jerry J. Khouri has 25 years in public and private experience. He served six cabinet Ministers at the Ontario Government including Director of Policy for International Trade, Environment, and as Senior Advisor to Finance/Treasury Board and Attorney General. He is a business development and policy professional with knowledge and expertise in public policy and government, economic strategy, international trade and political risk.

TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 1

RUSH LINE AT THE THEATRE

Film Details: 105 minutes | Directed by Maiken Baird | Documentary | 2026 | USA

Following the screening, join us in the Gallery for a panel on Edward Said’s legacy
Saturday, October 3, 2026, 5:15 PM

Synopsis: Told in Palestinian-American scholar and intellectual Edward Said's own voice, this sweeping archival documentary traces the evolution of his political awakening, personal struggles, and reckoning with a life of exile. It is the first documentary granted full access by the Said family and estate, featuring never-before-seen material from the family archive, the Said archive at Columbia University, decades of unseen home movies, rare television appearances, documentaries, and lectures. Spanning seven decades — from Said's childhood in Jerusalem in 1935 to his death in 2003 in New York City — the film follows a man celebrated as a prophet and vilified as a terrorist, America's most outspoken critic of the West and Palestine's fiercest advocate, inviting audiences to question who has the right to tell their own story. 

Award: CPH:DOX 2025 — Al-Jazeera Co-Production Award 

TIFF Gallery

TPFF Lammah: Community Storytellers Gathering (all ages) brings together the wisest members of our community to share their personal life stories from Palestine and the diaspora, from the Nakba to Toronto organizing. 

Date: October 3, 2026, 3:00pm

Location: TIFF Gallery, ground floor

A lammah is a traditional gathering where elders share stories with their community. Join our esteemed community leaders in conversation and hear about their experiences as Palestinian witnesses to historical events and their groundbreaking work that has strengthened the Palestinian culture and advocacy in Canada. 

Participants will be placed in small groups with a storyteller and learn about a variety of topics. After the break participants can stay in their group or meet another storyteller.

This is a wonderful opportunity to hear these untold stories of important historical events in Palestine and their trailblazing initiatives in Canada. Register to meet those whose shoulders we stand on. 

Meet our community storytellers:

Rana Abudulla is based in Winnipeg. She is an accountant and owner of the super popular Yafa Cafe. As a longtime advocate Rana championed many campaigns including the inclusion of the Nakba Exhibit to the Canadian Human Rights Museum.

Sami Al-Kilani was a professor at Al-Najah University, Nablus and a writer and poet. He helped found the Palestine Writers Union. His activism also led to him being arrested and imprisoned by Israel. He was also a part of the Palestine delegation at the Madrid Conference.

Issam Alyamani: Originally from Lebanon, Issam is a writer and long-time Toronto activist who has supported many important Palestinian institutions. He is also the author of Colors of Resilience featured in TPFF’s art exhibition.

Ghaleb Majid is a Nakba survivor from Beisan whose family resettled in the villages surrounding Nablus. After arriving to Toronto, he was part of the formative group that led Palestine activism from the 1970-90s and founded key Arab and Palestinian institutions.  

Khaled Mouammar hails from Nazareth before settling in Toronto. He worked as Immigration Board Member and was also part of the formative group of Arabs and Palestinian activists in Toronto that led important activist efforts and established key Arab and Palestinian institutions. He continues this important work.

Fadwa Qourah is not stranger to Palestinian activism having grown up in the West Bank during the First Intifada. Her journey eventually brought her Toronto where she is a key member of the TPFF organizing committee.

Join us for a hands-on all-ages Tatreez workshop led by Learn Palestine. Learn basic stitches, patterns, and the stories carried in each motif and make yourself a wearable item you can enjoy after the workshop.

PLEASE NOTE NEW START AND END TIME: 12:00-2:00pm

Date: Saturday October 3, 2026 and Sunday, October 4, 2026
Venue: TIFF Lightbox, 350 King St W, Gallery
Time: 12:30 PM  (more details closer to the event)

This workshop is open to all skill levels and ages including children.  Participants will be seated together based on their skills and age groups (children/youth and adults). 

Spaces are limited.  Workshop fees ($15) are for the purchase of materials. If costs are a barrier to participation please email us.

Please cancel your registration if you no longer can attend. Refunds may be issued if cancelled spots are filled by other participants. 

Join the Toronto Palestine Film Festival and the Textile Museum as we honour the art and history of Palestinian thobes.

Date: October 1, 2026, 6:00pm 

Venue: TIFF Lightbox, Gallery

The Textile Museum of Canada will be hosting a special exhibition Retracing Tatreez: Palestinian Thobes through the 20th Century from September 24, 2025-May 2, 2027,

TPFF is thrilled to host a talk by Nina Rafique, the exhibition's curator. She will explore the exhibition's collection of thobes and reveal the stories of family, exile and resistance these thobes tell through their embroidered stitches. 

Copresented with the Textile Museum of Canada. 

Bio

Nina Rafique is an emerging textile artist, curator, and researcher living in Toronto, with roots in Palestine and Pakistan. Retracing Tatreez, her debut exhibition at the Textile Museum of Canada, stems from eight months of research on the Museum’s collection of Palestinian and Syrian embroideries. She is inspired by and indebted to the original makers of these pieces, and hopes to raise appreciation for their work by making it more widely accessible.

Join us for an evening with Assal Rad, and her new book "Don't Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide". 

She will be joined in conversation with journalist Samira Mohyeddin, On The Line Media. Together, they will discuss how mainstream Western media uses biased framing in their reporting to downplay Israeli violence and dehumanize Palestinians to justify and bolster support for genocide in Gaza.

Date: Thursday, October 1, 2026
Venue: TIFF Lightbox, 350 King St W
Time: 6:00 PM  (DOORS 5:30PM; event 6:30pm)

Book signing to follow event. Purchase books via this form for a special 20% discount. (Regular priced books available at TIFF store while supplies last)

The event is co-presented by Canadian Journalists for Justice in Palestine, On The Line Media, Canadian Independent Media Fund, and Another Story Bookshop.

Book Description:

A searing indictment of Western media that lays bare how the “free press,” long tasked with speaking truth to power, instead became a vital part of the machinery that enabled the genocide in Palestine.

If you’re not writing the truth about crimes against humanity, you’re culpable in them.

Activist and Middle East historian Assal Rad is known as the “headline fixer” for her powerful posts that illustrate how mainstream Western media’s coverage of the Gaza Genocide is filled with double standards. 

In Don’t Say Palestine, Rad reveals a pattern of dehumanizing language—in outlets from CNN and the AP to the BBC and The New York Times—so consistently employed throughout the Palestinian genocide that it amounts to a policy. Mainstream Western media consistently downplays Israeli responsibility, “others” Palestinians, and casts doubt on inviolable tenets of international law like the sanctity of hospitals and journalists in war zones. This groundbreaking, eye-opening exposé offers both a moral reckoning and an urgent call to action, mapping with devastating clarity the media’s complicity in whitewashing a human rights crisis.              

Bios: 

ASSAL RAD is an activist, historian of the modern Middle East, and a Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC and DAWN. Her first book, The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, The National Interest, The Independent, Foreign Policy, and more, and she has appeared as a commentator on BBC World, Al Jazeera, CNN, NPR, and elsewhere.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN is a multi-award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and producer with extensive experience in public media. For nearly a decade, she was a producer at CBC Radio’s national flagship current affairs programme The Current, and also served as a host for CBC Podcasts and guest co-host on As It Happens. In 2023, she founded On The Line Media, an independent media company committed to amplifying the voices most needed to help audiences make sense of the world. The company’s work centres on intimate storytelling, critical conversations, and informed analysis.

Co-Presented by our friends at Canadian Journalists for Justice in Palestine (CJJP), On the Line Media, and Another Story Bookshop