Muddy Currents – Films – Visions du Réel

Shadi Habib Allah
Palestine | 2026 | 20 min
European Premiere
Language : Arabic
Subtitles : English, French

Muddy Currents goes back to the literal source of Israeli domination in the settlements in Palestine. Starting with the capture of water, artist Shadi Habib Allah explores how a people is deprived of its natural and basic resources, formally asking the question: how do we represent the lack of what is necessary?

An invisible aspect of colonisation in Palestine, the confiscation of water by Israel’s Mekorot Water Company severely affects the lives of people in the occupied territories. Forbidden from using their own water, Palestinians are forced to dig in secret to access the sources on their own land. The art of water divining enables the creation of maps that reveal underground currents. Muddy Currents adopts a technical approach to tackle the highly political issue of the appropriation of this resource essential for survival. And there’s an added financial dimension: Israel charges Palestine for the treatment of water that the country itself cannot access. While the sound conveys the complexity of these reflections, the images capture water in slow motion or completely still, magnifying it by focusing on a bead of sweat forming on the skin. This visual technique of immobilisation, which turns water into an almost solid substance that no longer flows, hints at the impossibility of being deprived of this resource vital to survival.

Raphaëlle Pireyre

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