Jumana Manna, still from Wild Relatives (2018). Courtesy of the artist.

 How long is the line between the do-good gesture, the feel-good story, and war profiteering?     Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Artforum

Graced with beauty, humanity, irony, and touches of humour, Jumana Manna’s sophomore feature witnesses the afterlife of a unique event that captured headlines worldwide: the first complete withdrawal of a nation’s seed collection from the ​“doomsday vault” (officially known as the Global Seed Vault), which is burrowed deep beneath the Arctic permafrost as an agricultural safeguard should disaster strike. The film traces the journey taken by the Syrian backup seeds: from their origin in a seed bank in Aleppo, refuge in Norway, and germination and cultivation in Lebanon; to the accession of a new generation of backups into the vault. Encased within these endangered but resilient seeds are political, cultural, and personal narratives of displacement, revolution, war, climate change, biodiversity, monocultures, and extraction. Preceded by two short experimental documentaries. In English, Arabic, and Norwegian with English subtitles.

A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch’s Last Masquerade)
Palestine/​Norway 2013
Jumana Manna
12 min. DCP

The Goodness Regime
Palestine/​Norway 2013
Jumana Manna, Sille Storihle
21 min. DCP

Wild Relatives
Germany/​Lebanon/​Norway 2018
Jumana Manna
64 min. DCP

Programmed by Michèle Smith