A diasporic Palestinian filmmaker unearths a century-old Scottish missionary's film archive of pre-Nakba Palestine, and brings it back to the people it left nameless. The journey takes him across Palestinian communities in Europe and the Middle East in an attempt to repair an erased past and address an uncertain present and future. In the process he traces his own family's displacement back to its roots.
In 2023, a Glasgow-based Palestinian filmmaker unearths ten never-before-seen archival films in Glasgow depicting the life of a Scottish missionary living in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s. The filmmaker begins a road trip across Europe and the Middle East towards Palestine as a form of archival repatriation to the Palestinian people.
Through archival encounters, Palestinians in the diaspora witness their ancestral past and, in the process, create a new archive. ‘Before Our Diaspora’ takes us on a unique journey, weaving the archive of an unspoken past into an investigation of a heightened present and uncertain future, exploring the power of film as a form of collective witnessing.
