***This event is now taking place at Sparks. All tickets booked through HeadFirst are still valid.***

Bristol Palestine Film Festival is teaming up with Bristol’s dynamic live poetry night Raise the Bar for an evening of spoken word, film and discussion in support of Palestine, on the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. The event will be headlined by rapper and activist Lowkey with an acapella spoken word performance, as well as a lineup of Palestinian poet and film-maker Hind Shoufani and writer Selma Dabbagh.

“One of the best poetry nights in the country” (Rafeef Ziadah)

“Out-loud reactions are encouraged…shaking off traditional theatre etiquette” (Bristol 24/7)

With performances from:

Lowkey

Lowkey is a hip hop artist and political campaigner, who has been outspoken in his support for a free Palestine and in achieving justice for the victims of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. His critically acclaimed music has received millions of streams on Spotify, sold over 25,000 albums digitally and garnered over 45 million YouTube views. His independently released album Soundtrack to the Struggle (2011) achieved huge success in UK charts. His most recent album Soundtrack to the Struggle 2 featured Noam Chomsky, Frankie Boyle and Ken Loach alongside musicians like Maverick Sabre and has been streamed millions of times.

Hind Shoufani

Hind Shoufani is a Palestinian-American filmmaker, writer and poet. Her work spans 25 years as a director, producer, editor of both video and the written word, poetry performer, event organiser and host, researcher, English/Arabic translator and university professor. Recently, she won a BAFTA & an Oscar nomination for the film The Present and her latest documentary, Heavy Metal [showing at BPFF in Shorts Evening II] premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2023. She is a Fulbright scholar from Jordan, with an MFA in film from The Tisch School Of The Arts at New York University.

Selma Dabbagh

Selma Dabbagh is a British Palestinian writer of fiction and trained lawyer who lives in London. Selma’s first novel, Out of It, was published by Bloomsbury in 2011/2012 and was nominated as a Guardian Book of the Year. Selma has also written and published numerous short stories with Granta, Wasafiri, Saqi, Telegram, International PEN and others.  Several of her short stories have been nominated for awards, including PEN and Pushcart. Selma holds a PhD from the University of London and she works with the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) in London.