The Battle of Empty Stomachs (2023)

This is a free event.

Theater Rotterdam loves cinema just like us! Especially when created by local talents. Every month we present a Short Film. From Friday January 10 to Sunday January 12, we’re going to present The Battle of Empty Stomachs (2023) by Diana Al-Halabi, a film researching harrowing hunger strikes undertaken by Palestinian prisoners. On January 10 at 19:20, we’re having talk with Diana, moderated by Amira Gad.

About the film

The Battle of Empty Stomachs (2023) researches harrowing hunger strikes undertaken by Palestinian prisoners. It is a reminder of the lengths to which Palestinians must go to fight for their basic human rights. This film is a poetic and musical tribute to those who suffered the aftermath of famine and migration, and to Palestinian hunger strikers whose resistance outlives the deafening silence of the colonial world.

The filmmaker

Diana Al-Halabi, originally from Lebanon, is a Rotterdam-based artist, who studied Fine Arts at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and took part in Ashkal Alwan’s Homework Space Program in Beirut. She pursues an interdisciplinary practice, with a focus on moving image, text, performance and painting. Al-Halabi’s artistic practice is a continuous protest against hierarchical and patriarchal systems of oppression. Her works often seek to shift grounds and scale down the oppressor through visual language. Through an intersectional feminist lens, Al Halabi’s practice departs from the personal to the political and tackles notions such as patriarchal cognitive anthropometry, institutional violence, disabling bureaucracy, settler colonialism and the visa regime. The Battle of Empty Stomachs (2024) won the IFFR RTM Pitch Award and is officially selected for IFFR 2024.