“Dad, I want to be a filmmaker,”  I pronounced at 12 years old, from our home in rural Ohio. “You can’t be a filmmaker,” my father responded.  You’re Palestinian. No one will care what you have to say.”  I was shocked. You’re wrong, I said to myself, rejecting his statement outright. Yet his words have continued to haunt me.  My first memory of traveling to Palestine to visit our native village was when I was eight years old. Armed Israeli soldiers held my family at the border for 12 hours. They picked through the contents of our suitcases. My father […]