Miya Miya Film Club is honoured to screen Abgad Hawaz, a striking short by @robinriad , as part of our 2025 Closing Night Program.
In this experimental minute-long film, the Arabic alphabet is taught in 28 steps, but what begins as a simple language lesson transforms into something far deeper. Each letter, hand-drawn onto 16mm film, becomes both sound and symbol, a reflection on voice, identity, and the act of reclaiming one’s language.
Created in response to online anti-Arab hate, Abgad Hawaz turns to care, creativity, and resistance through form. It’s a reminder that our languages are living, breathing things, vessels of history, sound, and belonging.
For Miya Miya, this film embodies what we celebrate: SWANA stories that resist erasure, that find poetry in the political, and strength in the smallest gestures of expression.
Abgad Hawaz screens as part of our Closing Night lineup! 10 short films honouring the beauty, depth, and complexity of our region and diaspora.
Come early, stay late, and bring your thoughts on what language means to you and what it carries when it speaks.
شو كانت حلوه الليالي
thank you thank you thank you to everyone I met during my time in Spain. I’m currently getting ready to leave and I’m holding back happy tears from such an incredible experience ❤️
thank you to @alvarofeldman for your collaboration, and for introducing me to this wonderful filmmaking community. i met so many great people, too many to name and made so many connections
thank you @acme.estudio@acme.obscura for your generosity, support, kindness and for all the delicious meals and coca cola ceros
thank you @l__a_v_@denebmar for your hospitality, and for inviting me to your space
thank you @s8cinema@elenaduque@angelrueda8 for inviting me to represent the8fest in what is now my most favourite festival. and to all the filmmakers who allowed me to share their work in Madrid and in La Coruña
and thank you again to @alvarofeldman but also @satur4ted@nikhol___@chau_chita@vickytronch@eterno_retorno@lebora.devy@dedaleras@sofiaptudela@sarumiras@violetas_p@0jorgit@jaimegsa_@ferromagnetica@fernandavicensf@didac.huma@ro_raffaella and so many more for your friendship, laughs, and love. crazy to think I met most of you just a few weeks ago … feels like a lifetime!
see you sooner than soon Spain ;) hasta luego
إنا لله وإنا إليه راجعون
My beloved grandmother, Nayra passed away on Tuesday.
She was a great woman. We nicknamed her Yaya, not because we were Greek, but because I didn’t know how to pronounce her name as a baby. She loved painting with oils, listening to music and lighting incense as she cleaned, and cooking chicken bane (Egyptian chicken cutlet). She didn’t mind if we insisted on helping her dry clothes on the balcony and dropped a sock or two. She was very kind, and loved her family very dearly.
I’m going to miss her very much. She used to call at 5am because she never realized there was a time difference between us, and I would always wake up so frustrated. I wish the phone would ring at 5am again.
Allah Yerhamek, Yaya ❤️
