Interrupted Futures: Artists in the Shadow of Suspended States

The screening under the title “Interrupted Futures: Artists in the Shadow of Suspended States” gathers the work of three Onassis AiR Fellows: Shuruq Harb, Pary El-Qalqili, and Sophie Ataya, whose practices confront the dissonance between hope and arrest, visibility and erasure, voice and censorship.

In the decades since the Oslo Accords, many whose lives were meant to be transformed instead find themselves navigating a landscape of unfinished promises, silenced histories, and deferred autonomy. The three artists expose through film what has been withheld: the everyday landscapes shaped by occupation, moral constraint, and stalled progress; the internal worlds of memory and intergenerational longing; the hidden and forbidden stories of identity and belonging. Their art refuses to be contained by official silence, by aesthetic norms, or by narratives that demand either compliance or erasure.

Pary El-Qalqili is a writer and director based in Berlin. In her cinematic work, she explores nonlinear narratives that challenge hegemonic storytelling. Looking at life that has been disrupted, uprooted, colonized, and marginalized, she understands fragmentary narrative forms that embrace ruptures, gaps, and irritation as key to decolonizing not only our gaze, but also our minds. Her feature, “The Turtle’s Rage,” has been awarded at international film festivals and had a German cinema release. Her last short film, “neighbors,” co-directed with Christiane Schmidt, was nominated for the German Critics Award 2019. She is currently teaching at various institutions, such as Berlin University of Arts, Johann Gutenberg University, Mainz, Barenboim-Said Academy, Berlin, and the self-organized film school filmArche, also in Berlin.

Pary El-Qalqili was a participant of the Onassis AiR Extended Research Residencies program for 2024–25.

Sophie Ataya is a German-Palestinian writer, director, and film curator based in Berlin. She holds a degree in Middle Eastern Studies (Free University Berlin and Birzeit University, 2019) and is an alumna of the Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris (2023–24), a prestigious program focused on international (co)production, distribution, and sales at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, La Fémis in Paris, and NFTS in London. As part of the Atelier program, she produced the short film “Let’s Call It Love,” which premiered at the Max Ophüls Film Festival.

Before shifting to filmmaking, Sophie worked in cultural production with international organizations in Lebanon and Palestine. From 2020 το 2022, she participated in a Documentary Directing program at the self-organized film school filmArche in Berlin. In her cinematic work, she focuses on (post)migration identities, as well as themes of identity and belonging from a post-migration perspective. Through storytelling, she seeks to amplify underrepresented narratives, using film as a tool for empowerment and anti-colonial practice.

In her curatorial practice, she focuses on contemporary Arab cinema, curating short film programs for various screenings in Berlin and Paris. Through these events, she highlights the power of film to foster community and collective experience.

She has directed and produced a short essay film and is currently developing the script for her first fiction short film. “WHO WE ARE” (working title) is her debut feature documentary.

Sophie Ataya is a participant of the Onassis AiR Extended Research Residencies program for 2025–26.