It is always possible to stop looking away.
– Omar El Akkad, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Join Writers & Books and Witness Palestine Film Festival for a pair of short film screenings at University of Rochester in support of our Rochester Reads 25th Anniversary selection, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.
Sumud (2025) and Khsara (2024) will be screened (total run time: 45 mins). El Akkad will be in conversation with University of Rochester associate professor of religion, Joshua Dubler.
Sumud: A Doctor’s Report On Genocide and Survival in Gaza (2025)
Directed by Jan Haaken, with commentary from Omar El Akkad (Runtime: 26 minutes)
Sumud is an Arabic word meaning steadfast perseverance.
As increasing numbers of journalists in Gaza are killed by Israeli forces, Gazan health care workers and international medical volunteers serve as vital reporters bearing witness to the ongoing genocide. The film follows Dr. Travis Meleen, an American anesthesiologist volunteering at Nasser Hospital in Gaza as he works with Palestinian surgical teams that continue training at Nasser Hospital even as the medical center is under siege. The film includes commentary from Omar El Akkad, an Egyptian-Canadian journalist and writer reporting on the genocide. He is the author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
Khsara: Apathy is The World’s Greatest Sin (2024)
Directed by Dean Bushala (Runtime:15 minutes)
Khsara is an Arabic word meaning to suffer loss.
KHSARA is a documentary short that shines a spotlight on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the heroic efforts of the medical workers providing humanitarian aid. Produced by Red Branch Productions, partnering with MedGlobal, the documentary captures the crisis and relief efforts in Gaza via raw, poignant, and powerful moments through the eyes of MedGlobal’s medical teams. Khsara brings the horrors and realities of medical humanitarian work into the public eye, leveraging authentic, in-the-moment footage captured by those who experience it firsthand.
Omar El Akkad is an Egyptian-born, Canadian American novelist, journalist, and winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Non-Fiction. Livingston is a Rochester-born writer, professor, and prize-winning author of five works, including memoirs and essay collections. Writers & Books will spotlight El Akkad’s One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (2025) and Livingston’s Ghostbread (2009), a powerful pairing that underscores literature’s capacity to bear witness to the lives, places, and issues that are often left in the margins.
Joshua Dubler is an associate professor of religion at the University of Rochester. He founded the Rochester Prison Education Project which in 2019 became the Rochester Education Justice Initiative. He is the author of Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison (FSG, 2013) and co-author of Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons (Oxford, 2019).
This event is a partnership between Writers & Books and Witness Palestine Film Festival and is co-sponsored by The University of Rochester’s Graduate Program in Visual & Cultural Studies and the Student Association for the Development of Arab Cultural Awareness.