Composed almost entirely of family home videos, Three Promises captures intimate, honest, and moving details from the life of the director's family in the town of Beit Jala during the outbreak of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s. Through a sequence of daily family moments, documented by the director's mother, the film delves into various intersecting and overlapping themes such as remaining and leaving, the particular and the common, homeland and exile, and resistance and surrender, all brought to life through these family tapes.
The film will be presented in Arabic with English subtitles.
Yousef Srouji is a first time documentary filmmaker and longtime storyteller. His work centers around understanding the dynamics of occupation in Palestine, and community resilience in conflict zones. He holds a Master of Development Practice from UC Berkeley and hopes to use his skills to aid and empower marginalized communities in the Middle East. Yousef spent the first part of his childhood in Palestine, then relocated to Qatar with his family in the midst of the Second Intifada. He attended the University of British Columbia, where he earned a BA in Economics. He has been a fellow with the SFFilm Catapult Documentary Fellowship, received production and post-production grants from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), and has been a fellow with the Gotham Documentary Feature Lab (formerly IFP Documentary Lab.)