A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Release Date:
October 25, 2025
Original Title:
If Birds Believed in God
Genres:
Drama
Production Countries:
United States of America
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 20
The story follows a day in the life of Ismail, a Palestinian photographer whose American upbringing was shaped by his grandfather’s displacement during the 1948 Palestine Nakba. When Ismail’s mother gifts him his grandfather’s keffiyeh—a traditional Palestinian scarf—it triggers an internal struggle between shame and pride in his cultural identity, all unfolding against the ominous backdrop of rising violence against Palestinians.
Art Department Assistant:
Dong Huimin
Assistant Camera:
Hugo Boucard
Kelly Wang
Hippolyte Charlut
Assistant Director:
Nida Farhoud
Boom Operator:
Riel Lewis
Jonathan Silverman
Casting Director:
Andrew Dahreddine
Colorist:
Jefferson Rosa
Director:
Samer Saifan
Director of Photography:
Andrew Lin
Editor:
Samer Saifan
Executive Producer:
Samer Saifan
Gaffer:
Marlo Irani
Grip:
Romain Menegon
Thibault Leboeuf
Siyu Ren
Key Grip:
Vincent Le Chaffotec
Makeup Effects:
Ava Sexton
Music:
Cankat Guenel
Producer:
Darren Zeng
Natalia Hess
Samer Saifan
Production Design:
Samer Saifan
Maya AlZaben
Script Supervisor:
Sabina Maschi
Sound Editor:
Jonathan Silverman
Sound Mixer:
Amina Hamawy
Jennifer Fang
Sound Re-Recording Mixer:
Otar Bregvadze
Writer:
Samer Saifan
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.