Susan Youssef

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



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.