Farah Atoui, PhD

Farah Atoui is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Moving Image Studies, as well as an independent curator and film programmer. Her research, teaching, and curatorial practice focus on moving-image works from the Global South—particularly the Arab world—examining artistic interventions produced under conditions of struggle and duress, including occupation, colonization, war, displacement, and crisis. She approaches these practices as forms of resistance and critical knowledge production that enliven solidarity and decolonial imaginaries.

She holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University, where her doctoral research examined post-2011 experimental Syrian documentaries as countervisualizations to the representational regime of the so-called refugee crisis. This project forms the basis of her first monograph, currently under development. Atoui previously held a postdoctoral fellowship in Concordia University’s Department of Communication Studies, in affiliation with the Feminist Media Studio. She is also a member of the Regards Palestiniens and Regards Syriens screening collectives.

COURSES

WINTER 2027
FMST 650 | Curatorial Practices in Film and Moving Images (MA seminar)
FMST 205 | Approaches to Film and Moving Image Studies II (undergraduate course)

FALL 2026
FMST 316 | Film and Moving Image Cultures: Practices of Resistance (undergraduate course)
FMST 204 | Approaches to Film and Moving Image Studies I (undergraduate course)

WINTER 2026
FMST 448 | Visual Cultures of Resistance: Contemporary Practices and Aesthetics in Experimental Film and Video Art (undergraduate seminar)
FMST 335 | Arab Cinema: Histories, Politics, Global Movements (undergraduate course)

FALL 2025
FMST 804 | Borders, Displacement, and Media (PhD seminar)
FMST 204 | Approaches to Film and Moving Image Studies I (undergraduate course)

WINTER 2025
FMST 316 | Film and Moving Image Cultures: Media of Resistance (undergraduate course)

WINTER 2024
FMST 620 |Borders, Displacement, and Media (Graduate seminar)

GRADUATE SUPERVISION (past and present)

Aylin Gökmen (PhD, Film and Moving Image Studies) | "Hybridity as Resistance: Post-Archival Strategies in Stateless and Contested SWANA Short Documentaries (2008–2025)"
Yasmin Kobeissi (MA, Film and Moving Image Studies) | "Contemporary Lebanese Short Films: Artistic Practices and The Mediation of Memory in Times of Adversity"

Completed:
Armaan Mohan Chainani (MA, Film and Moving Image Studies) | "Gaza and The Grotesque: Affective Solidarities In the Age of Mediated Violence"

2023—2026 | The Political Aesthetic

An ongoing research-creation and public screening initiative examining film and artistic practices that engage histories of colonialism, political struggle, and resistance through transnational and decolonial frameworks. Across screenings, workshops, and public conversations, the project investigates the political and aesthetic capacities of the moving image to reactivate contested histories, interrogate archival violence, and generate forms of solidarity and collective memory. Selected programs include:

• Displacing Resistance, Resisting Displacement Screening series (2023-2024)

• Revitalizing Memories, En/Countering Histories Screening series (2025-2026)

• Relinking the Chain of Memory—workshop led by Jihan El-Tahri on archival absence, historical narration, and practices of recontextualization (2026)

• Sankofa: Look Back to See the Future— public screening & keynote with Jihan El-Tahri at La Sala Rossa (2026)

2025 | forms of resistance/love is the deepest

A workshop examining how artistic, discursive, and curatorial practices grapple with the limits of expression and representation under conditions of violence and political struggle. Taking the work of multi-disciplinary artist Jayce Salloum as a point of departure, the project explored visual, sonic, textual, and relational forms as modes of engaging experiences often considered unrepresentable. The project culminated in:

• talking about it is also resistance—curated screening program on the interview as aesthetic and political form at Cinéma Public. 

• Roundtable 2: talking about it is also resistance—editorial publication in World Records Journal.

2021 | Making Revolution: Collective Histories, Desired Futures 

A research-creation exhibition and public programming initiative exploring forms, temporalities, and embodiments of revolutionary struggle across the Middle East and North Africa. The project examined how audio-visual artistic practices reactivate the political and poetic legacies of earlier revolutionary movements to engage present conditions of struggle and possibility. Public programming included multilingual guided tours, the screening event Dreaming Revolution, and a roundtable discussion about the potential of revolutionary images. Presented at Montreal Arts Interculturels (MAI).

EDITORIAL

Farah Atoui and Cynthia Kreichati (eds.) (2025). Roundtable 2: talking about it is also resistance. World Records Journal. 

BOOK CHAPTERS

Farah Atoui (forthcoming). “Migrant Syrian Cinema.” Routledge Handbook on Popular Culture in the Middle East, edited by Caroline Rooney and Anastasia Valassopoulos. London: Routledge.

Farah Atoui (forthcoming). “Seeing in Chaos: Cinematic Translation and the Ethics of Witnessing.” Cinema of Global Solidarity, edited by Masha Salazkina and Matthew Croombs, Oxford University Press.

Farah Atoui and Muhammad Nour El Khairy (forthcoming). “Questionnaire on Practices of Cinematic Solidarity.” Global Solidarity and/in Cinematic Practices. Conversations, edited by Masha Salazkina. Frankfurt: Meson Press.

Farah Atoui (2020). “The Calais Crisis: Real Refugees Welcome, Migrants ‘Do Not Come’.” Moving Images: Mediating Migration as Crisis edited by Krista Lynes, Tyler Morgenstern, Ian Alan Paul. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. 211-228 

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES  

Farah Atoui (2023). “Of Place and Cement.” World Records Journal Vol. 8 

Farah Atoui (2020). “Return, Recollect, Imagine: Decolonizing Images, Reclaiming Palestine.” Postcolonial Directions in Education, 9(1), 8-42 

OTHER WRITING

Farah Atoui and Cynthia Kreichati (2025). "The Interview as Form and Force." Roundtable 2: talking about it is also resistance. World Records Journal. 

Farah Atoui and Nour Ouayda (2020). “Surgissements : poétiques de l’image vidéo.” Hors champ, Mai/Juin.

Farah Atoui (2016).  “S’approprier, re-monter, effacer, s’approcher: la puissance de transformation du cinéma dans ‘Recollection’ de Kamal Aljafari.” Hors champ, Nov./Dec.

Farah Atoui (2016). “Appropriate, Remix, Erase, Zoom-in: The Transformative Power of Filmmaking in Kamal Al Jafari’ s Recollection.” Offscreen, 20 (10).

2021 | Imaging and Imagining Intimacy

Co-convened this interdisciplinary conference explores the critical possibilities afforded by imaging processes and practices in the production of diverse forms of intimacy as a crucial locus for the possible reconfiguration of social and geo/political relations. McGill University.

2018-19 | The Political Imaginary of Waiting 

Co-organized this year-long graduate student working group and public screening and lecture series dedicated to exploring the politics, poetics, and aesthetics of waiting through the lens of media studies. This project culminated in an artist-led workshop focused on decolonial artistic practices. Supported and hosted by the Global Emergent Media Lab (Concordia University) and La Lumière collective, Montréal. 

CURATED SCREENINGS AND FILM PROGRAMS

2026 | The Missing Image is Gaza

A program of short experimental films and video works exploring everyday life, gesture, and ritual as resistance in Gaza and in exile. Presented in collaboration with Vidéographe at Dazibao gallery.

2025 | Land Back: From Palestine to Turtle Island

A program bringing together Palestinian and Indigenous moving-image practices to explore the intersection of land, identity, and anti-colonial struggles. Presented in collaboration with Vidéographe at Dazibao gallery.

2024 | Journal d'une occupation/Diaries of An Occupation

A screening program of experimental short films on/from Palestine as part of a multidisciplinary event convened by Hors champ as part of the Experimental Cinema Symposium, Cinémathèque Québécoise. 

2023 |Gaza: Between Images and Bodies

A program of historic, experimental, and forensic films examining the tensions between visual representations, embodied experience, and the witnessing of colonial violence. La Sala Rossa.

2021 | Queer for Palestine

Co-curated a program of queer Arab films exploring the intersection between gender, sexual identity, and Palestinian liberation struggle. Organized in collaboration with Cinema Politica at La Sala Rossa. 

SOLIDARITY AND PUBLIC SCREENINGS

2026 | Up to the South 

A solidarity screening featuring works by Jayce Salloum at La Sala Rossa.

2025 | A State of Passion 

The Montreal premiere of Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi’s documentary film at La Sala Rossa & Cinema Public.

2025 | The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived 

A screening of the restored film in collaboration with Regards Noirs at La Sala Rossa.

2024 | Beirut, The Encounter

A Lebanon solidarity screening, Critical Media Lab, McGill University.

2024 | Resistance, Why?

A Palestine solidarity screening, La Sala Rossa.

2024 | Bye Bye Tiberias 

A public screening in collaboration with Cinema sous les etoiles, Molson Park.

2021 | Revolution Until Victory

An outdoor Palestine solidarity screening in collaboration with Le Sémaphore collective. 

2020 | Beyrouth plusieurs fois/Beirut over and over again

A Lebanon solidarity outdoor screening in collaboration with Le Sémaphore collective and Hors champ.