What great news! From the 19th – 28th October, the Journeys Festival will be heading back to Portsmouth. The Festival will bring international sounds and global inspired artwork to the city, sharing the art work of exceptional refugee and asylum seeker artists. As part of the Festival, we are so proud to be screening the amazingly inspiring Soufra on Friday 26th October, and what’s more, we are screening it for free!
Just to keep you on your toes, there is a slightly different booking process for this film. To get your free ticket, go to our Eventbrite page by clicking here, or just head over to the Eventbrite page and search for Soufra in Portsmouth.
Keep reading for a summary of the film, you can also click here to watch the trailer.
Soufra follows the unlikely and wildly inspirational story of intrepid social entrepreneur, Mariam Shaar – a generational refugee who has spent her entire life in the Burj El Barajneh refugee camp just south of Beirut, Lebanon. The film follows Mariam as she sets out against all odds to change her fate by launching a successful catering company, “Soufra,” and then expand it into a food truck business with a diverse team of fellow refugee woman who now share this camp as their home. Together, they heal the wounds of war through the unifying power of food while taking their future into their own hands through an unrelenting belief in Mariam, and in each other. In the process, Mariam is breaking barriers, pulling together Syrian, Iraqi, Palestinian and Lebanese women to work side by side and form beautiful friendships while running this thriving business.
Soufra will shine a new and revealing light on people inside of the largest refugee crisis in human history, but ultimately this film is about hope, grit, passion and the common bonds created by bringing people together around food as a bridge to overcome all barriers. Though Mariam is officially considered “stateless” she is a beacon of hope and home for thousands upon thousands of women in the most unlikely of places. Mariam and her team will be just that for thousands more once her story is told through Soufra.
We hope you can join us on Friday 26th October, it promises to be an inspiring and thought-provoking evening.