Doha Film Institute
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Set in the Jabal Al-Shaykh ecological zone, ‘Land Keepers’ follows stewards in South Lebanon, occupied northern Palestine and the occupied Syrian Jawlan, resisting ecocide through care, cultivation and collective documentation.
‘Land Keepers’ is a documentary project set in the Jabal Al-Shaykh ecological zone, spanning South Lebanon, occupied northern Palestine and the occupied Syrian Jawlan. The film traces how warfare, settler-colonial infrastructure and imposed borders have produced ecocide across this shared landscape over time, while communities continue to practise forms of green resistance rooted in care, cultivation and survival. Developed through long-term, land-based collaboration, the film centres farmers, foragers, herders, beekeepers and local residents who tend the land while documenting its destruction. Attentive to both human and non-human life, ‘Land Keepers’ weaves together on-the-ground footage, community testimony, scientific research and experimental visual elements. By treating documentation as a collective practice, the film acts as a vessel for collective witnessing and resistance. One that reconnects fragmented territories and sustains memory, ecology and life across past and present.

Credits

Director
Iyad Abou Gaida, Darine Hotait
Producer
Jumanah Abbas
Co-Producer
Ala’a Amer, Tanita Janina Enderes
Production Company
EcoRove, Semasser

About the Director

Iyad Abou Gaida
Iyad Abou Gaida is a farmer, filmmaker, ecological designer and researcher from Hasbaya, South Lebanon. His work centres land, ecology and memory as sites of resistance to colonial violence, and is developed through EcoRove, a collaborative multimedia research platform he co-founded. Raised on his family’s ancestral olive groves, Iyad approaches cinema as a form of land stewardship and collective
Darine Hotait
Born in Beirut, Darine Hotait is a Lebanese-American writer and film director. Her short film, I SAY DUST (2016), premiered at Outfest, won Best Short Film at Med Film Festival in Rome, and was acquired by Sundance TV, BBC, and AMC Networks. In 2018, her short film LIKE SALT premiered at HBO and won the Oscar-Qualifying Best Short Film award at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival and sc
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