Middle East Now Festival Returns to Florence with 17th Edition, Theme 'Radical Movements'

The 17th edition of Middle East Now takes place in Florence from 6 to 11 October 2026, with the theme Radical Movements. Over 30 titles from Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan explore political, social, artistic, and personal movements. Three highlighted films are A Fox Under a Pink Moon by Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhlaghi, Souraya Mon Amour by Nicolas Khoury, and Palestine Comedy Club by Alaa Aliabdallah and Charlotte Knowles. A Fox Under a Pink Moon follows Soraya, a young Afghan artist who films five years of attempts to leave Iran and reach her mother in Austria. Souraya Mon Amour reconstructs the love between dancer Souraya Baghdadi and director Maroun Baghdadi in civil-war Beirut. Palestine Comedy Club follows six Palestinian comedians on tour through walls and checkpoints to London, where their debut coincides with 7 October 2023. Beyond cinema, Street Levels Gallery hosts the group photography exhibition What Moves Us from 8 to 31 October, curated by Roi Saade, featuring Turkish photographer Erdem Varol, Tunisian Skander Khlif, and Egyptian Ebrahim Bahaa-Eldin. Sudanese artist and political cartoonist Khalid Albaih, in exile and a visual voice of the Arab Spring protests, presents Revolution, Intermission, curated by Bayan Abubakr, an exhibition transforming political cartoons into an archive of twenty years of revolutions, counter-revolutions, and collective struggles in the Arab and African world.