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sherif

@anw_rahim

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Egyptian American Filmmaker.
Video Artist. Poet.
@sundanceorg isf building bridges fellow
@columbiafilm directing mfa 26'
@thegotham edu fellow

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Please forgive me as I do this for the first time. My name is Sherif, and I'm a filmmaker, poet, writer, organizer and teacher. I was an organizer for over a decade, and came up organizing for Palestine and Black Lives Matter before it was called that, in 2011.

I make art as an extension of my love for people and their capacity to individually and collectively change, and see my filmmaking as an extension of my poetry and storytelling. I aim to tell the truth to power, and capture life as I and those that I read or speak to see it.

Cinema for me is a matter of baring the soul in order to close the distance between us all spiritually, it is to elevate our collective, social being. We need art to make wisdom out of information as Toni Morrison wrote. Art is a sacred trust, and I am grateful to have the chance at this point in my life to be able to take such risks, no matter how difficult, because I'd rather die than not make the films I must make. What is in my heart and what I create do not belong to me, but to you, and to Allah who I am a servant of, who may choose to use me as a vessel of truth, meaning both the beautiful and the ugly. And I don't mean aesthetically, I mean with respect to how we as human beings hurt or help one another.

If you read this far, I pray you and yours are good, and thank you for the gift of your time.

📸 @oceanelyse

1) Hawaii during the @sundanceorg @islamicscholarshipfund @dorisdukefdn Building Bridges Retreat.

2) The sea, connected to all seas

3) A photo that required bodily contortion to capture.

4) The third time I directed, and the first time at columbia.

5) Writing beneath Ghassan Kanafani and Toni Morrison.

6) A photo I took in my neighborhood in Jersey.

7) Placing a keffiyeh on the columbia alma mater before I began my MFA here.

8/9) Protest photos back in 2022 in Brooklyn.

10) Slow motion of the Mediterranean between Tangier and europe. May all the displaced in the seas find peace and power. by @anw_rahim

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10 months ago

Thank you @thegotham @deadline for the support by @anw_rahim

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a year ago

Grateful for this family formed thanks to @islamicscholarshipfund @sundanceorg @dorisdukefdn Alhamdulilah

We are setting out to create a model for fellowship and building bridges.

@cocos.sanctuary @anw_rahim @samina.saifee @asgharthegrouch @samiakhanbams I got your back 4ever by @anw_rahim

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2 years ago

Our dear friend, Momo, passed away this past Friday in her sleep. Please say a word for her.

Momo reshaped my entire being. We found her during Ramadan of 2023 in Riverbank where she was abandoned, and ever since, she’s been a beacon of so many things: love, stillness, patience, humor, and honesty. It took me a while to understand how she speaks: with her eyes. When she’d close them, or give side eye, or convey gratitude, love, or anger.

I’d walk around at times with Momo on my arm or shoulder around the city. At one point a brother I ran into on the street filmed her and I and asked me her story. Months later at Washington Square Park, I heard someone yell “Lizard man!” and turned around and saw this same brother. The moment made me laugh because it was something I never expected to be called in life, but to be called Lizard Man because of Momo was something I cherished.

Momo always had an opinion. People either feared her or satiated their curiosity, but the one commonality was that she always garnered a response from people. Sometimes it was too much, and I felt a need to shield her at times from people because of her old age. She started experiencing pain, and it saddened me to see.

Life is beautiful, and Allah has a funny way of gifting us friendship and love in ways we never see coming. Momo taught me how to see, and appreciate nature and animals in all their details and glory. The first time I ever drew anything that wasn’t a stick figure was her, and I realize now she was a teacher. She didn’t really like her portrait, but that’s another story.

Momo was a dragon, a reincarnation of someone I love, an elder, a friend, and a companion. For you, Momo, I am deeply grateful. I hope and pray you are somewhere safe, and at rest, running around with curious eyes as you once did, peering through trees and windows with the soul of life pulsing through your veins. You had many friends, and you were deeply loved. Thank you for everything. taken in Riverbank State Park by @anw_rahim

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2 months ago

Egypt played so well, and I’m not saying that because I’m Egyptian. I’m saying it because they did. And they should’ve won, or at the least, drawn and gone to extra time. But again, however, we’re seeing a corrupt institution, FIFA, steal goals and games yet again. There is clearly a script, and if you look at how Iran, Egypt and other teams have been treated you’ll notice an undeniable pattern that allows for someone like trump to call and have a red card rescinded.

Did Egypt draw?

FIFA is officially a joke and no one can tell me otherwise. In my book, Egypt won, and FIFA has lost forever. ##fifaworldcup2026 #egypt #i̇ran #argentina by @anw_rahim

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3 months ago

We threw this event in December, and here's some snippets off a camcorder filmed by @dylgil_

The Artists

Fatema Alhashemi @fattooshe is a Bahraini painter, translator, and writer whose latest translation of @djinnbad ’s Hidden Companions is now touring across the United States.

@djfatin Fatin is a Palestinian artist based in New York City, and has played at dozens of venues throughout the country. Without her, we would not have been able to put on the event! Book her.

Safia Elhillo @safiamafia is a world renowned, award winning Sudanese American writer and poet.

Dylan Gilbert @dylgil_ is a Brooklyn based poet and curator who also filmed the event.

Fatimah Asghar @asgharthegrouch is a filmmaker, poet, and novelist whose latest book Daughter of the Mountains will drop on July 7th, followed by a US tour. Fatimah also premiered her film Anatomy of a fuckboy. It premiered this past week at the Brooklyn Film Festival, and screened at First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum.

Samina Saifee @samina.saifee is a filmmaker and singer, whose film Ayat just dropped. Give it a watch - click the link in her bio.

Cameron D. Clay @cm.cly is a filmmaker and video artist whose latest film, JESUS IS COMING (TO TAKE THE CHURCH AWAY), recently premiered at the Atlanta Film Festival, and will have its second festival premiere at Black Star. He is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Hadeel Assali @anthropologicalexchange is a Palestinian writer scholar based in New York City. She screened her film Daggit Gaza that evening, and focuses on mutual aid for Gaza with family and community.

I (Sherif Ibrahim) am an Egyptian-American filmmaker and poet, Sundance ISF Building Bridges Fellow, a Gotham EDU Fellow, and a recent graduate of the Columbia MFA in Film with a concentration in Directing.

Free the people, free the land, thawra above all, for us all. by @anw_rahim

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4 months ago

send congrats
for graduations, new chapters and
big love, amplified taken in Brooklyn, New York by @anw_rahim

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4 months ago

‼️WORLD PREMIERE‼️

So excited to announce that Anatomy of a F*ckboy is being premiered at @brooklynfilmfestival !!!!!!

@brooklynfilmfestival @brooklynfilmfestival @brooklynfilmfestival

Tickets in bio. June 5th. Pls come and bring friends!

Poster by @menon.deepti by @anw_rahim

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4 months ago

muslims were killed again today like they've been killed again and again.

i wanted to feel, and so i painted. i didn't know how else to process beyond the prayer mat and art. so i took out my spray paint and just let colors flow. i paint as a hobby.

i thought of the souls taken from us and how we are told not to mourn, and drew birds.

i thought of the book simulation and simulacra by jean baudrillard and i drew reflective projections and screens, since its deception that taught these young white boys that killing muslims is the only path forward.

i wrote the words nour (light) and killer in arabic, and the shape in the center left behind by the paint was improvisational. i didn't know if it'd hold or not. but it did, and i see many things in it.

how are we to explain to children the world over that this is the world we live in? a world where many lust for their blood?

how do we overcome this degree of hatred? how do we fight it, knock it out?

i don't know what path there is beyond art, healing and organizing, but i do know feeling is a path instead of numbness.

and lately ive felt numb and fight to feel so i can return to the truth of what is happening around me and in the world. every time an arab, african, muslim is killed i feel it until it overwhelms me.

may the martyrs have found peace and beauty and rest in the next life. may we all heal together toward strength and love. may we overcome this unending blindness that inverts our reality.

this is unfinished. if you've painted or wrote to heal or process, i'd love to see. by @anw_rahim

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5 months ago

The program will feature:

Daggit Gaza by Hadeel Assali, a Palestinian scholar and filmmaker

paintings by Fatema Alhashemi, a fiction writer and painter

poetry by renowned filmmaker, poet and novelist Fatimah Asghar, who most recently wrote on Ms. Marvel and wrote/directed the upcoming film Anatomy of a fuckboy

a film by @cm.cly, recent winner of the Gotham Short Film Award and one of the producers of Destiny

Poet and curator, Dylan Gilbert

Renowned poet Safia Elhillo, who has performed internationally and received numerous awards for their writing.

Samina Saifee, a filmmaker and great singer

@djfatin will spin for us

BYOB and ticket link in the bio! by @anw_rahim

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10 months ago

Jabal Musa (Mount Sinai)

What is it to hike the mountain that Moses is said to have climbed to receive The Ten Commandments? Growing up I loved the film The Prince of Egypt, and as I watch it now, I take inspiration and hope from it as a story, but I imagine Palestinians returning to their land in droves. I imagine thawra. I imagine dignity, beauty, and life. And I pray for it, and hope it surprises us like the way light touches the mountains and the clouds move before our eyes as we move through time with spirits that find inner noor to guide us on our paths in the midst of genocides that must end that the billionaire media will have us believe have ended already. Glory and love to the martyrs, to the oppressed, love to all justice and freedom loving people, and may we find a way together toward a new and different world and shape it collectively with our hearts, words, patience, imagination, and actions. by @anw_rahim

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10 months ago

Hi everyone! We are hosting a party to fundraise for the film Destiny on December 20th at 8PM at the Mayday Space in Brooklyn.

The event brings together poets, filmmakers, singers and artists for a night of music, solidarity, and cultural work that centers the energy and spirit of the film itself. Artists will share their work across mediums in a poetry-cinema event that aims to blend the arts as creative space and community making.

Destiny is a spiritual science fiction film that aims to invert the typical sci-fi film's structure into one that invokes revolutionary Arab storytelling and image-making, and stars Adam Bakri.

The film begins where films like the Matrix end - how do belief and the collective subconscious shape our world, and how can they be tuned to the frequency of transcendence and transformation? The film is itself a love letter to cinema, Palestine, and the ways in which we come to believe an idea or vision so deeply that it forces the world to accept radical change.

The evening will bring together poets, filmmakers, painters and musicians to introduce the film to the broader New York community.

If you cannot afford a ticket, please DM.

Mayday Space is a historic NYC space that we aim to center and honor by hosting this event in the space. Please join us for a beautiful evening with friends, strangers and art that aims to heal and galvanize our hearts toward revolutionary transformation.

Link in bio! by @anw_rahim

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10 months ago