A World Not Ours

Synopsis

A World Not Ours hits notes on a wide emotional scale, from tears to laughter, as filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel makes us feel for his family, friends, and home as strongly as if they were our own. His themes are universal, yet they are also rooted in a specific place: the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh in Lebanon. The camp's name translates as "Sweet Spring"—a place hastily built in 1948 that now houses 70,000 refugees in one square kilometre. Fleifel spent his formative years in the camp in the 1980s before his family settled in Denmark.