Habibi bistanan and al bahar

'My Love Awaits Me by the Sea' is a poetic documentary narrating the story of director Mais Darwazah, who takes a first time journey back to her homeland, Palestine. She leaves a secluded reality and follows a lover whom she has never met; Hasan, a Palestinian artist, who unveils a beautiful and Utopian world to her. Fairytale and reality are woven together to question the elusiveness of place and the need to believe in dreams. In a land fragmented and engulfed by years of struggle, she finds her tranquil love awaiting her in a 'home' protected and held together by today's Palestinians. They defy their everyday reality - far removed from their needs - by holding onto their dreams. This film pays tribute to Hasan Hourani, a Palestinian artist who, with his imagination, rises above the Occupation. Hourani completed 'Hasan is Everywhere', a children's book of illustration and poetry, just before his tragic death by drowning in the forbidden sea of Jaffa in 2003. Throughout the film, both worlds of dream and reality provoke one another, to ask the questions of 'How do you return to a place that only exists in your mind?' 'How do you keep fighting for life when you're surrounded by so much death?' 'How can you continue believing in a dream when the outside world lives another reality?' And 'how can you own your version of the truth when history has taken it from you?'—