The Battle of Empty Stomachs
Screenings
Based on research and interviews with both Palestinian hunger strikers and asylum seekers, this absurdist yet realist film stages a dialogue between the director and her mother tongue that centers on a single question: What do we know about hunger?
This film is a poetic and musical tribute to those who suffered the aftermath of famine and migration, and to Palestinian hunger strikers whose resistance outlives the deafening silence of the colonial world.
Directors Spotlight
Diana Al-Halabi
Director
Born in Lebanon in 1990, Diana Al-Halabi is a Rotterdam-based visual artist and filmmaker. Through an intersectional feminist lens, Al-Halabi’s practice departs from the personal to the political and tackles notions such as the patriarchal gaze, institutional violence, bureaucracy, settler colonialism, and the visa regime. Her current research is on “Famine and Hunger Strikes: Decolonizing the Digestive System”. With her work, Al-Halabi aims to challenge dominant power structures and create spaces for resistance. Her works often uses moving image, text, performance, and painting as a medium. In 2022, with a crossover to filmmaking, Al-Halabi’s film “The Disaster Cannot Be Contained” was screened in several film festivals, including IFFR, and was awarded as the best short for the national competition at the Beirut Shorts International Film Festival. In 2023, she was awarded the IFFR RTM PITCH Award for producing her short film “The Battle of Empty Stomachs” which premiered at the IFFR 2024.
- Runtime 23 minutes
- Country The Netherlands
- Language Arabic, English
- Director Diana Al-Halabi
- Cast Annemarijn Bulsink, Diana Al-Halabi, Mustafa Kur, Sophia Haid, Fernando Troya, Helene Rozerrood, David Krooshof, Dennis Dowdesq, Roel Twijinstra
- Cinematographer Pauline Maroun
- Composer Farah Kaddour & Salwa Jaradat
- Editor Diana Al-Halabi
- Producer REVOLVER, Albert Kuhn, Yara Safadi, Diana Al-Halabi
- Screenwriter Diana Al-Halabi
- Sound Design Jawad Chaaban
- Premiere North America
