Susan Youssef

Looking inward at the Chicago Palestine Film Festival

This year’s festival featured work by filmmakers asking questions for their own community.

Film review: Gaza love story triumphs over Israeli obstacles

Sarah Irving
29 March 2013

Habibi splices an ancient romance with experiences of the second intifada.

Susan Youssef's Habibi, a Gaza feature film a decade in the making, wins major award

Susan Youssef’s new feature film Habibi has won the award for Best Arab Feature Film at the 8th Dubai International Film Festival.

This achievement comes after a decade-long struggle by Youssef to make the film. Last year she wrote for The Electronic Intifada about the trials of making a feature film set in Gaza and what inspired it:

The trials of making a film in Gaza

Susan Youssef
the Netherlands,
Amsterdam
22 March 2010

I am on a plane, on the way back from Palestine to my apartment — a quiet, private place set in rainy Amsterdam. It is there where I will edit my film, a love story set in the Gaza Strip. I have just finished shooting it, the first dramatic feature to be made about Gaza in more than ten years. And it took me seven years of continuous development and fundraising to shoot it. Susan Youssef recounts her experience for The Electronic Intifada.

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