Darin Sallam on Portraying the 'Nakba' and the hardship of Palestinians in Netflix's "Farha"

Darin J. Sallam is an award-winning Jordanian writer and director of Palestinian roots. Her critically acclaimed debut feature film FARHA (2021) premiered at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival and garnered numerous accolades, including a historic first win for Jordan at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards “the Asian Oscars”, making Sallam the first Jordanian director ever to be awarded an APSA​. FARHA also represented the Kingdom in the International Feature Film category at the 95th Academy Awards (Oscars) in 2023. Farha is a film – one of the handful of films – about the Nakba, the violent displacement of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. It’s played some of the world’s biggest film festivals, from Busan to Toronto, and has streamed globally on Netflix since December 2022. It was also Jordan’s official submission to the Oscars.
In this candid interview with Melanie Steliou, Darin Sallam shares the challenging process of making the film and how the Israeli lobby, unsuccessfully tried to get the Farha removed from Netflix.