THEFT OF FIRE

A failing museum and a career hampered by the Israeli Occupation push NAJI, a struggling Palestinian artist, to undertake a daring heist inside a prison in the Negev Desert. Inside, Naji must outwit MOSHE DAYAN, an Israeli military legend, who has hidden away a massive collection of stolen Palestinian archeology. Naji carefully executes his heist as he deals with mistrust from his fellow inmates. Ultimately, Naji is faced with a decision: choose his own personal revenge or help his fellow inmates in the Palestinian resistance. As Naji gets closer to finding the artifacts he also must come to terms with a tragic loss that has been haunting him since childhood. Shifting between documentary and narrative, THEFT OF FIRE is a heist film where the audience becomes part of the robbery. At its core, the film questions how a people can tell their narrative when history is being stolen out from under their feet.

LENGTH

Feature

GENRE

Hybrid Documentary

PRODUCED IN

STATUS

WITH THE HELP OF

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Amer Shomali is a Palestinian multidisciplinary artist, using painting, films, digital media, installations and comics as tools to explore and interact with the sociopolitical scene in Palestine. Much of Shomali’s work examines the creation and the use of the Palestinian revolution’s iconography. Shomali co-directed an award-winning animated documentary, The Wanted 18, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. The film was awarded the best documentary award in Abu Dhabi, Carthage, Traverse City, and Al-Jazeera Film Festivals. The Wanted 18 was in the official submission lists for the foreign language and documentary categories of the Oscars 88th. His art works are part of several collections: The British Museum, the Arab World Institute, the Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence (MoMRtA), Birzeit University Museum, Al-Qattan Foundation; as well as the private collections of Dr. Ramzi Dalloul, Ms. Rana Sadik, Mr. Hashim Shawa, Mr. Rami Nimer, and Mr. George Al Ama. Born in Kuwait in 1981, Shomali holds a BSc in Architecture from Birzeit University in Palestine, and a Master’s degree in Animation from Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom. He is currently based in Ramallah, Palestine

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Rashid Abdelhamid, of mixed Palestinian-Serbian origins, was born and raised in Algeria and received his education in France and Italy, going on to live and work in Gaza from 1997 to 2008. After a career in architecture, in early 2013, in collaboration with twin Gazan filmmakers Tarzan and Arab, he founded Made in Palestine Project, an independent arts initiative to create and promote contemporary visual art with a focus on Palestine. He is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of Alhoush.com, a pioneering cultural networking and e-commerce portal for contemporary Arab art and design launched in April 2012. Before his work on Condom Lead, Rashid Abdelhamid produced

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