SALMA’S HOME to screen at Arab Film Festival in San Francisco

release date November 01 2022

Hanadi Elyan’s SALMA’S HOME is set to screen at the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco – which will run from November 11th to the 20th – on Saturday, November 19th at 2:45 pm (GMT-7) at the Roxie Theater. This significant event (Arab Film and Media Institute) is the largest Arab film festival in the United States.

During October, the film screened at 4 film festivals in the US: the Heartland International Film Festival in Indiana; the Austin Film Festival in Texas; the Arab American National Museum Arab Film Festival in Michigan; and the Boston Palestine Film Festival, where it had a sold-out screening and additional seating was required to accommodate the enthusiastic audience. Internationally, the film was shown at the American University in Cairo's Tahrir Cultural Center, and actress Juliet Awad won awards at the Malmo Film Festival in Sweden after a screening that was sold out.

The film had its world premiere at the Cinequest Film and Creativity Festival in San Jose, US, where it won the Best Feature Film (Global Vision Award) and was nominated for best feature film at the Atlanta Film Festival.

In July, SALMA'S HOME was released exclusively on Netflix in the Middle East and North Africa region, where it ranked in the top 10 of the platform's most-watched films for three weeks in a row.

Prior to its Netflix release, the film premiered in Jordan at Taj Cinemas in the presence of the cast, crew, critics, and media figures.

According to Cinema Crazed’s Emilie Black, SALMA’S HOME is "a carefully crafted drama that feels like home," telling the story of three women with distinct personalities.

Salma (Juliet Awad) is a talented baker living alone in a large old house overlooking downtown Amman, running a nonprofitable home-based bakery. Her daughter Farah (Sameera Asir) is a young working mother with marital problems with her husband, Malek (Firas Taybeh). Their lives are then suddenly disrupted by the death of Salma’s ex-husband, with the funeral taking place at the house of his second wife, Lamia (Rania Kurdi), an aspiring socialite who is obsessed with social media. After the funeral, Uncle Emad (Waleed Jizawi) reveals some shocking news, which leads to conflict over property ownership and forces the three women to face some harsh facts and take charge of their lives.

The film received widespread international acclaim, with critic Ola Al-Sheikh explaining via Raseef22 that "the film's power lies in making the audience feel that they know the characters well and can relate to them."

Meanwhile, Cineccentric’s website said the " film is a story of family, grief, and solidarity," adding that Elyan is skilled to the point where you can't tell SALMA'S HOME is the director's debut feature film.

Additionally, Mercury News' Randy Myers praised the film, calling it "a delightful debut feature from Palestinian-Jordanian filmmaker Hanadi Elyan that offers a refreshing, humorous, and heartfelt take on the bonds and relationships between three generations of Arab women."

Written and directed by Hanadi Elyan, the film stars Juliet Awad, Sameera Asir, Rania Kurdi, and Firas Taybeh. It was also produced by Reel LA Productions’ Nathan Bennett while MAD Solutions is handling the film’s distribution in the Arab world.

Elyan is a Palestinian-Jordanian filmmaker whose work focuses on the social issues facing marginalised communities from a female perspective. Her films have competed in film festivals around the world.

She started her film career in Jordan then moved to Dubai and helped establish Reel Arab Productions. Later, she moved to Los Angeles after being selected for a full-ride scholarship, where she earned her MFA in Film Production/Directing from UCLA. Elyan currently serves as Assistant Professor of Narrative Film Directing at Emerson College.

Furthermore, she previously won numerous funds and awards for her films, including the Jordan Film Fund for SALMA’S HOME and a screenplay titled ‘Camp Beauty Queen’, along with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Award, Delia Salvi Memorial Award, a Special Jury Award at Tangiers Film Festival for Mariam's Chance in Morocco, the George Burns and Gracie Allen Scholarship Fellowship in Comedy, and The UCLA Directors Spotlight Award in 2018.