This is a win for Palestinian cinema on the international stage — 'Chentian' already has €35,000 in funding locked down from Göteborg, and adding Arab Media Network's Abu-Lughod Studios gives it serious regional weight heading into ECAM Forum.
Insiders note Arraf is still hunting for locations, cast, AND crew — the film is deep in financing mode. One well-placed source says Odeh is specifically targeting Spanish co-producers at Madrid to fill a remaining funding gap before cameras can roll.
The project won €35,000 ($41,650) at Göteborg Film Festival Nordic Film Market's Tin Post-Production Award. It pitches June 10, 2026 at ECAM Forum in Madrid. Arraf told Variety: 'There can be no liberation of Palestine without the liberation of women.'
With 'Chentian,' Arraf is doubling down on politically charged women's stories — and with Odeh attached as a fierce fighter for female-driven cinema, this project has the pedigree to back it up. The question now is whether international co-producers will bite at Madrid.
The buzzed-about Palestinian-German project 'Chentian' just got a significant boost as producer May Odeh has brought Rina Khoury from Jordan's Arab Media Network onto the fold, Variety can confirm. Khoury joins via Abu-Lughod Studios, adding crucial regional muscle to an already stacked producing team that includes Odeh Films in Palestine and Germany-based Mayana Films (co-founded with Zorana Mušiki), not to mention German producer Lena Zimmerhackel and support from the Arab Cultural Fund.
The project — written and set to be directed by Suha Arraf, the acclaimed scribe behind 'Lemon Tree' and 'The Syrian Bride' — is still very much in development mode. Locations, cast, and crew remain up in the air as financing continues to take shape. The film did, however, snag a cool €35,000 (roughly $41,650) at this year's Göteborg Film Festival Nordic Film Market, taking home the Tin Post-Production Award — no small feat for an early-stage project.
Next stop: pitching live on June 10 at the ECAM Forum co-production market in Madrid, where Odeh will be actively hunting for Spanish co-producers, sales agents, and festival programmers to close the financial picture. Arraf's film centers on two sisters — Nabila and Shams — bound together by an exchange marriage to two brothers in what the logline describes as 'an isolated farming Palestinian village inside Israel.' When Nabila's husband dies in a tractor accident, she's left living trapped under the same roof as her sister and brother-in-law Walid.
A forbidden desire for him begins to bloom just as Israeli authorities start confiscating their land — personal tensions colliding head-on with political pressure. The director pulled zero punches when explaining the film's core themes to Variety. 'Chentian is a feminist and political film about the relationship between women's bodies and the land,' she said, later adding: 'There can be no liberation of Palestine without the liberation of women.' She also revealed that female protagonists in the story are raised to believe they're incapable — until circumstances force them to discover their own power.
It's heady stuff, rooted in Arraf's very real childhood: she grew up working tobacco farming in a Galilean village near the Lebanese border (the Israeli town of Mi'ilyaa) before leaving at 18. 'You may leave the village, but the village never leaves you,' she reflected. For Odeh — who received the Variety MENA Talent Award back in 2000 and has credits spanning 'Aisha Can't Fly Away,' 'Hanging Gardens,' and the critically praised '200 Meters' — coming on board 'Chentian' was personal.
'What immediately moved me is how the film speaks about very intimate female experiences while still reflecting larger political realities, without becoming didactic,' she said. She confirmed she's a year and a half into the project now, convinced both by Arraf's vision and their shared Palestinian roots. Odeh called her 'a fierce fighter for the films she believes in' — high praise from someone who has spent two decades championing cinema from the region on the global stage.
This is Arraf's second directorial feature; her debut, 'Villa Touma,' premiered to multiple awards back in 2014. She noted that while she loves writing for other directors, her own directing ambitions lean toward something visually layered with minimal dialogue — built on symbolism, poetry, and image. Her next screenplay, 'Kingdom of Bees,' will also be female-focused, drawing from a true story set against the backdrop of war in Lebanon involving a woman from her own family.
