Filmmaker Avi Mograbi and his Arabic teacher and friend Ali Al Azhari go looking for the ruins of Ali’s village, from which he was expelled during the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. Instead, they find wild asparagus. The film continues the 2012 Nichnasti pa’am Lagan [Once I Entered a Garden]. Again, encounter is both an experiment on memory and an effort to communicate. While Mograbi chases a film with humour and some nostalgia, we discover a man’s bond with a land.

Aligned with BDS rules for spaces free of apartheid, and owing to some of the film’s funding institutions, Doclisboa will not screen Once I Entered a Garden in this programme. It can be streamed at avimograbi.org.