Bristol Palestine Film Festival returns this November with early preview of The Voice of Hind Rajab

This year’s Bristol Palestine Film Festival returns from Friday 28 November to Sunday 7 December. The vibrant programme celebrates the creativity and courage of filmmakers from Palestine and beyond.

In 2025, the suppression of Palestinian experiences has escalated to new levels. But in a time of deepening erasure and cultural suppression, filmmakers resist through art, expression, and imagination.

The Festival is bringing together powerful new fiction, crucial investigative documentaries, rare archival works, and communal events that reflect, connect, and rejoice.

Groundbreaking fiction from Tunisian Filmmakers

The festival opens with an exclusive early preview of The Voice of Hind Rajab. It’s a haunting story of a child’s last phone call now heard across the world. It won the 2025 Venice Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and broke records with a 23-minute ovation, the longest in the festival’s history.

Audiences in Bristol will get to see it one month before its official release, followed by a cast and director Q&A.

Censorship and control

At the centre of the wider programme are documentaries Censoring Palestine and The Palestine Laboratory. These are two vital and urgent investigations confronting the machinery of silence and surveillance. Censoring Palestine uncovers how counter-terror laws, cultural institutions, and broadcasters suppress Palestinian perspectives in Britain.

The Palestine Laboratory, based on Antony Loewenstein’s acclaimed book, reveals how Israel turns occupied Palestine into a testing ground for weapons and surveillance, which is subsequently exported across the globe. Together, these films expose the intertwining of censorship and militarisation, from Palestine to Britain and beyond.

Other highlights include A State of Passion, following surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah under bombardment, and the Voices from Gaza shorts (Gaza Sound Man; Vibrations from Gaza; It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive).

Resistance as culture, joy as survival at the Bristol Palestine Film Festival

The Bristol Palestine Film Festival closes with the Palestine Comedy Club, followed by a live stand-up set from one of the film’s stars – ending the programme with sharp wit, shared laughter, and unfiltered insight.

And after the screening of Aisha’s Story, audiences can join in with a communal meal, explore the poster exhibition at The Island, take part in creative poster-making workshops, and attend a special evening of Palestinian poetry. Dabke dance workshops and post-screening discussions with directors and invited guests will further open space for collective expression.

Bristol Palestine Film Festival trustee Karena Batstone commented:

This year’s films and documentaries, from The Voice of Hind Rajab to Censoring Palestine and The Palestine Laboratory, reveal the uncomfortable truth: what is happening in Palestine is deeply intertwined with us in the UK. In Bristol alone, so many are protesting the city’s role in the global arms trade. These films make that connection real, such as showing how technologies and surveillance tested on Palestinians come back to affect us all.

Bristol Palestine Film Festival gives audiences an opportunity to join the dots, to realise our complicity, and to think about the shared responsibility we carry. And the festival gives our audiences a chance to connect, understand, and seek solidarity together.

This year’s festival is a celebration of cinema and community, at a time when we need it more than ever. Find the full programme here.

Image via Bristol Palestine Film Festival