Dina Shuhaiber

A mute, homeless, Syrian refugee learns the meaning of home through the kindness of a woman he meets and a magical cardboard box he befriends.

A hot summer's day in the Gaza Strip. Today the electricity is on. Christine’s beauty salon is heaving with female clients: a bride-to-be, a pregnant woman, a bitter divorcée, a devout woman and a pill-popping addict. But their day of leisure is disrupted when gunfire breaks out across the street. A gangland family has stolen the lion from Gaza’s only zoo, and Hamas has decided it’s time to settle old scores. Stuck in the salon, with the prospect of death drawing ever nearer, the women start to unravel. How will the day end? Will they lose their lives for the sake of “liberating the lion”?

Yara is a Palestinian-American screenwriter in Los Angeles whose online Arabic lessons with Hana, a poet and teacher living in Gaza, blossom into a profound friendship built on shared ambition, humor, and sisterhood. When war suddenly tears them apart, Yara must confront grief, diasporic guilt, and the responsibility of using her voice to ensure Hana’s story is not forgotten.

A Syrian doctor attempts to escape her war-ravaged homeland with her young daughter.