Here & Elsewhere Film Festival - Where the Narrative Returns to Its Hands

In 2025, a casual evening in the Gemmayzeh neighborhood of Beirut ended with a somewhat drunken exchange of business cards between Habib and Lilith Blazek. At the time, neither knew it would lead to a scheduled meeting, let alone a festival. Shortly after, Lilith flew back to Barcelona Habib reached out to her. At the time she had been speaking with Fateema al-Hamaydeh Miller, a Canadian-based Palestinian filmmaker who was looking to organize fundraising events to fund her debut feature film. This independent approach gave Fateema the freedom to tell her story without censorship or the need to conform to Western industry standards. Through a series of online meetings, the group began collaborating, and the project quickly outgrew its original fundraising scope. Within three months, the first edition of Here & Elsewhere was launched across Beirut and Barcelona. 

The collaboration was defined from the start by a producer-director dynamic, a natural structure since both came from filmmaking backgrounds. They treat the organization of the festival much like the creation of a film, with Habib acting as the director and Lilith as the producer. While applying film industry labels to event coordination initially caused some confusion among external collaborators, the creative synergy worked. By May 2025, their partnership crossed over into actual production when Habib invited Lilith to produce his master’s film, Online Friends. 

The two co-founders complement each other well, balancing Habib’s strength in managing people with Lilith’s focus on logistics, always finding a natural balance in the middle. Being deeply embedded in the filmmaking process allows them to remain highly sensitive to what independent creators actually need. The festival is intensely focused on the experience of the filmmakers themselves. Because Here & Elsewhere is entirely non-competitive, the goal shifts away from rivalry and toward genuine community building, placing an equal emphasis on the connection with the audience.

Established in 2025, Here & Elsewhere emerged directly in response to the systemic barriers that consistently restrict SWANA filmmakers, who way too frequently face unequal access to funding and immense industry pressure to conform to narrow stereotypes. The festival was designed as a community-led platform where creators from Southwest Asia and North Africa could share their work on their own terms. For its sophomore edition in 2026, the independent non-profit initiative expands its transnational reach by balancing two distinct locations. The journey begins in Beirut, their original “Here”, with screenings at the Beirut Art Center from October 8 to 10. From there, the festival travels to its designated “Elsewhere” for the year, landing in Rome from November 19 to 21 at Zalib, a Circolo Arci located in Trastevere. 

Choosing Rome as the 2026 international destination was a deliberate decision rooted in community ties and film history. Following their inaugural international edition in Barcelona, the organizers wanted to build on the remote network they share across almost every continent. Because an existing community link already connected the team to Italy, Rome felt like a natural extension. The city also occupies a central role in global cinema heritage, making it an intentional backdrop for SWANA stories. By bringing these films into a historic cinematic landscape, the festival aims to position these narratives within established cultural spaces rather than treating them as marginal art, creating a unique point of exchange for both the local Arab diaspora and the wider public. 

People often focus on the glamour of artistic direction, but as the producer and project manager, you are the one making sure the festival actually happens. What was the most chaotic or absurd bts logistical hurdle you had to clear to get that first edition off the ground between Beirut and Barcelona?

There’s an unimaginable amount of logistical hurdles that come to mind, especially given it was our first edition. It’s hard to isolate one, instead, I think it’s worth highlighting the fact that we indeed pulled it off. A group of borderline insane 20-something-year-olds made a 3-day festival happen in Beirut amidst genocide and instability and carried it over internationally for another 3-day festival. 

Coordinating a volunteer-run festival with a team scattered across almost every continent sounds exhausting. How do you keep the collective energy feeling human and connected when so much of your work has to happen through screens?

Well, honestly, our whole thing as a film festival is showcasing humanity through the screen. So we’re accustomed to feeling connection through that visual medium. 

Working across different time zones can get a little messy, but the benefits of an international team far outweigh any challenges. We make it work through group chats, weekly departmental check-ins, and, most importantly, perseverance and a shared belief in our mission.

There are team members—like our London-based programme coordinator, Frankie Jenner—whom Habib and I have never met in person. She started volunteering in 2025 and will remain with us in 2026. What keeps us motivated and keeps things feeling “human” is the traveling nature of the festival: the idea that eventually, we’ll all meet Elsewhere. Ultimately, the beauty of a scattered team is having a global network that connects our project across continents.

Moving the “elsewhere” edition from Barcelona to Rome is a beautiful shift. Was there a specific moment, a conversation, or a rendering of a venue in Rome where you suddenly realized, “this is exactly where these SWANA stories need to live next?”

Rome is an important place in European film history, and we wanted to position SWANA stories within spaces where global cinema is already celebrated, rather than treating them as something that exists at its margins. We also felt that with Rome’s diaspora community, we could provide a space for those missing their “Here”. After we had decided that, everything fell into place quite quickly. 

Balancing a 100% independent, non-profit budget while insisting on ticket-splitting for mutual aid must be a tightrope walk. From a producer's standpoint, how do you protect the festival's community-first values without burning out?

It is a difficult model to sustain, and it’s definitely not easy to make it work with the lean budget we have. I do believe that the fact that we are independent is what makes it worth it because we have complete control over what films get screened without censorship or concern for the commercial viability of the topic covered. 

We protect our values by carefully selecting who we work with and asking for help from the community when we need it, it’s a genuine grassroots project. 

If you could isolate one quiet moment from the 2025 edition, a specific conversation in the lobby, a reaction from an audience member, or a sigh of relief backstage - that made you think “this is exactly why we do this,” what would it be?

I would say it would be a moment during the Beirut edition. The AV technician had to leave briefly right before the filmmakers’ Q&A, and the lights didn’t come on immediately, so I shouted from the control room for people to turn on their phone flashlights to see the filmmakers. 

When you’re creating a festival there’s so many things you overthink because you want everything to be perfect and professional, but it was that moment that made me realise that the community we’re building is more important than things running 100% smoothly all the time. It was that moment of everyone’s lights in the darkness that made me really take in the deep sense of community we had created.

This year’s theme is memory and archives, while cultural erasure is happening in Lebanon and Palestine in real time. Do you feel, somehow, the heavy weight of that responsibility?

It’s giving us too much credit to say that we’re holding the weight, as festival organisers, we’re solely responsible for creating a platform for the preservation of memories and archives. The filmmakers who are reliving family and regional trauma in the creation of works take on a much heavier weight. 

By giving a home to these narratives, we hope to lighten that weight and to share a little bit of that responsibility in combating cultural erasure. 

Without playing favorites among the official film selection, is there a particular movie or a director's journey in this year's lineup that personally resonated with you or surprised you during the process?

Favourites aside, I think “Bamssi,” directed by Mourad Ben Amor as his debut film, is an incredibly important title in this year’s programme. He’s a young Tunisian filmmaker redefining cinema through his DIY approach amidst socio-political and funding constraints. The experimental documentary follows his pets as protagonists. It's a fun and refreshing approach to filmmaking. 

Organizing a festival from scratch takes an immense amount of emotional and physical labor. When the deadlines pile up and the pressure mounts, what is your personal ritual to ground yourself and find your creative spark again?

Physical planners have been my lifeline for a while now. Planning and writing everything down so that all the steps are tangible helps me ground myself, clearing my mind and making room for creativity. Movement is also important, whenever I need to solve a problem, the solution comes to me when I’m jogging or lifting weights. 

Here & Elsewhere has successfully made it to year two, with eyes already on a third. Beyond the immediate horizons of Beirut and Rome, what is your wildest, most unfiltered dream for what this community platform could become?

Honestly, what H&E is right now felt like my wildest, unfiltered dream. Now that it’s tangible, I would say our next direction would be creating a streaming platform that gives underground, SWANA narratives a more permanent home. 

For those looking to experience the festival firsthand, the 2026 edition of Here & Elsewhere will unfold across its two symbolic shores over the coming months. The journey begins in Lebanon, running from October 8 to 10 at the Beirut Art Center, with tickets available for purchase online through the Ihjoz platform. Shortly after, the festival moves to its European chapter, taking over the screens at Zalib Circolo Arci in Rome from November 19 to 21. For the Rome dates, tickets will be sold exclusively at the door on the days of the screenings, though the organizers highly encourage attendees to secure an RSVP via Eventbrite to help manage the space. 

True to the festival's non-profit and community-first ethos, all proceeds generated from ticket sales will be split evenly to provide direct, collective support where it is needed most. Half of the revenue will go directly to Nation Station to sustain their vital, grassroots relief efforts on the ground in Lebanon, while the other half will fund the production of Cindy Chehab’s upcoming film, I Had to Learn How to Scream. Audiences wishing to explore the full lineup of the selected films, schedules, and panel discussions can find the complete programme by visiting their official website at hereandelsewhere.org, or by staying updated through their Instagram at @hereandelsewherefest. 

Photos by Daniel Clegg