An Unusual Summer

<h2>Synopsis</h2> <p>Following an act of vandalism, the filmmaker’s father decides to install a surveillance camera to record the scenes unfolding in front of the house. Everyday family life, the neighbours going to work, and the children at school, An Unusual Summer captures fleeting moments of poetry whereas, in the background, the daily choreography of the Arab district—that no one some name the “ghetto”—of Ramla, in current Israeli territory, comes to the surface. Composing with this visual material of low-definition aesthetics, finely punctuated with sound effects, Kamal Aljafari creates a mechanical diary of a life that scrolls past the window and succeeds with patience and infinite grace in transfiguring a ‘film à dispositif’ based on a security device into a personal and eminently political fresco. “In the distant past, many years ago, in front of this house, there stood a fig tree in a garden, which has now vanished, bulldozed into memory, and swept up by History and Time.<br /> – Emilie Bujès, Visions du Réel, 2020</p> <h2>About the Director</h2> <p>Palestinian filmmaker and artist Kamal Aljafari is known for his distinctive approach to cinema. He studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and has held teaching positions at The New School in New York and the Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie in Berlin. He was awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University and most recently a fellowship at The Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris (2024–2025). As from September 2025, he is a resident at Académie des beaux-arts x Cité internationale des arts in Paris. His installation “The Camera of the Dispossessed” was shown at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo in 2023.</p> <p>Aljafari was also honored at IndieLisboa 2024 with a full retrospective of his work at the Portuguese Cinematheque as well as at the Madrid Spanish Cinematheque in 2025. The feature film “A Fidai Film” (2024) was shown in over hundred festivals and won around 10 international awards. His most recent work, “With Hasan in Gaza” (2025), premiered in the International Competition at Locarno Film Festival, where it was awarded with the Europa Cinemas Label. The film has received main awards at DMZ Docs, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, CINEMED, Festival dei Popoli and is currently shortlisted for the European Film Academy.</p>