‘Wardi by Mats Grorud’

Present day Beirut, Lebanon. Wardi, an eleven-year-old Palestinian girl, lives with her family in the refugee camp where she was born. Sidi, her beloved great grandfather, was one of the first to settle there after being driven out of his village in 1948. The day Wardi receives the key to his former house in Galilee, she is afraid her grandfather has lost all hope of going back there. Each family member is trying to help this young girl to regain hope, each in their own way.

Mats Grorud is a Norwegian director and animator. The screenplay for his first feature-length film, Wardi, is based on refugee accounts and his own experience. In the 1990s, Grorud was a student at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, and gave classes in English and animation in the Burj El Barajneh refugee camp.