"We Sang" is a documentary that tells the story of the steadfastness and determination of the Palestinian people.

In a country where the past and the present intertwine and together draw the lines of the future, director Annie Skapp evokes in her short film “We Sang a Poem” her family’s past, which contains within it the past of an entire people, and the story of a poem that has stood the test of time and tells the story of Palestine. In the Canadian-Palestinian-Jordanian co-production documentary, which has its Arab world premiere at the Cairo International Film Festival (November 13-22), independent filmmaker and photojournalist Annie Skaab uses a poem by Palestinian poet and teacher Khalil Sakakini that her father and uncle used to sing to her when she was young to tell the story of her lost homeland.

Annie begins the film from a moment in her present, crossing the bridge into Palestine, which she crossed many years ago with her family to leave the country, leaving everything behind except for that poem. As she crosses the bridge, Sakab recalls the moments she lived in Palestine in the past, and uses her captivating cinematic language to move between the past and the present, as she remembers the Palestine that was, and writes a letter to her uncle Elias about a childhood she spent with him in the homeland, listening to the poem “We are the people of our fathers,” which Sakakini wrote in 1925 to protect his land that he feared losing, and they sing it many years later to preserve their stolen homeland from being lost.

“The poem became a subject of childhood for generations remembering the homeland. So I made the decision immediately, as I wanted to make a film to save this poem and music from being lost forever, as a dedication to my family and Palestine.”

Skab’s films focus on issues of identity and social justice. The idea for the film, co-written with Paul Lee, began with a burning desire to make a film about her family, to honor her uncle, her lost homeland in Palestine, and the trauma that has been passed down through generations. She combined archival footage of her family, the resistance, and the Palestinian people who lived on their land and were forced to leave it, with footage of two children representing her childhood. She chose to make it in black and white, because time has stopped for the little girl in a distant past that still haunts her present and casts a shadow over an uncertain future. The footage is accompanied by old audio recordings of her uncle talking about the moments of their displacement from Palestine, and a voiceover of a message she dedicates to him. Skab moves back and forth between all of this in a smooth manner until it becomes impossible to differentiate between what has passed and what is happening, and the differences dissolve and all that remains is that grief that generations share.