The Making of Lyd: Liberation through Imagination
Keywords:
documentary
Lyd
science fiction
Speculative fiction
nakba
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship
animation
Abstract:
In this essay, codirectors of the sci-fi documentary Lyd, Rami Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland, describe the impetus for making the film that imagines a Palestine never colonized by the British or Zionists. Drawing on research into Palestine’s rich and pluralistic history, the authors share the creative process behind producing the film’s imagined scenes of a Lyd that never experienced the Nakba or the exile of its people. They conclude with reflections on how Lyd provides needed inspiration for imagining alternate realities amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Author biography:
Rami Younis is a Palestinian filmmaker, writer, journalist, and activist from Lyd. He was a 2019–20 fellow at the Harvard Divinity School. He served as both writer and editor for +972 Magazine and Local Call, was the host of the Arabic-language daily news show, On the Other Hand, and is the cofounder and manager of the first ever Palestine Music Expo.
Sarah Ema Friedland is a Jewish American documentary filmmaker, artist, and educator. She was the inaugural director of the MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute at Skidmore College, and as of fall 2024, a clinical assistant professor in the Liberal Studies Department at New York University and director of the Liberal Studies Global Media Lab.
