The Battle of Empty Stomachs Diana Al-Halabi

This film is a poetic and musical tribute to those who endured the aftermath of famine and migration, and to Palestinian hunger strikers whose resistance survives the deafening silence of the colonial world.

Diana Al-Halabi (1990, Lebanon) is a Rotterdam-based artist, who studied Fine Arts at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and participated in the Homework Space Program of Ashkal Alwan in Beirut. She follows an interdisciplinary practice, with a focus on moving image, text, performance and painting. Al-Halabi’s artistic work is an ongoing protest against hierarchical and patriarchal systems of oppression. Her works often seek to shift the foundations and diminish the oppressor through visual language. Through an intersectional feminist lens, Al-Halabi approaches her practice from the personal to the political, addressing topics such as patriarchal cognitive anthropometry, institutional violence, crippling bureaucracy, settler colonialism and the visa regime. The Battle of Empty Stomachs (2024) won the IFFR RTM Pitch Award and was officially selected for IFFR 2024.