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Mizna is proud to co-curate a selection of contemporary films for MSPIFF45, coming up April 8–19. ‘SWANA Stories’ is a selection of feature films and shorts highlighting stories from Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Somalia, and more. Screenings will take place across the Twin Cities at The Main, Capri Theater, Edina Mann Theatre, and Pop’s Art Theater. 

MSP Film and The Main Cinema present the 45th Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Fest, aka MSPIFF45. Join them for their annual showcase of 200+ films from around the world and celebrate the power of cinema to unite, inform, and transform communities.

WHEN: April 8–19, 2026
WHERE: Multiple venues (specified below)

TICKETS

Use code for a discounted ticket rate of $13: MIZNAMSPIFF45

 

SWANA STORIES FILMS

 

Black Rabbit, White Rabbit
Dir. Shahram Mokri (139m, 2025)

Combining fantasy and reality, fate and freewill, Shahram Morkri’s spiralling and surreal story involves a girl, a gun, a movie set, and so much more. Multiple stories merge, including a movie within a movie within a movie, in a playful and often mesmerizing puzzle. At the center is Babak, a set designer who is working on his 40th production with ill-fated superstition that something tragic is about to happen. Long takes weave together subsidiary narratives–an errant gun, an aspiring actor, a woman injured in a car accident–into a filmic Möbius strip.

SCREENING
Thursday April 9, 9:35pm at The Main
Thursday April 16, 9:30pm at The Main
TICKETS

 

Calle Málaga
Dir. Maryam Touzani (116m, 2025)

María Ángeles, a 79-year-old woman, happily lives alone in Tangier, enjoying her sunny city on the Mediterranean. When her newly divorced daughter arrives from Madrid to sell her apartment, María finds a way to stay in her community, and in the process, she re-examines her life and falls in love.

Director Maryam Touzani‘s film is a warm, wonderful story, anchored by Carmen Maura’s spellbinding performance. The Spanish-speaking community in Tangier is itself a character, the film inspired by director Touzani’s own grandmother.

SCREENING
Saturday April 11, 2:30pm at Pop’s Art Theater
Saturday April 18, 7pm at Edina Mann Theatre
TICKETS

 

Cotton Queen
Dir. Suzannah Mirghani (94m, 2025)

In a close-knit Sudanese village known for harvesting the purist cotton by virginal hands, teenage Nafisa is dreaming of something beyond fertile fields. Her ambitions are amplified with the arrival of a wealthy young businessman returning to Sudan after years abroad. His introduction of a genetically modified seed promises to make the village completely dependent on his profit-driven vision of the future.

Through a blend of magical realism rooted in local spiritual customs set by village legend and elder Al-Sit, the film explores the complications inherent in the pursuit of progress as commerce and cultural sustainability vie for the hearts of the community. Nafisa’s strong will, open mind, and profoundly principled nature deepens and uplifts her to become the new hero her village needs yet might not be ready for.

SCREENING
Friday April 17, 9:35pm at The Main
Sunday April 19, 7:30pm at The Main
TICKETS

 

Eagles of the Republic
Dir. Tarik Saleh (129m, 2025)

After he’s forced to star in a propaganda film, a famous Egyptian actor is drawn into a shadowy world full of dangers in Tarik Saleh’s bold, stylish political thriller. Demonstrating the same ruthlessly sharp eye for Cairo’s power dynamics that distinguished the previous instalments in the director’s award-winning trilogy of films set in the city — The Nile Hilton Incident (2017), and Cairo Conspiracy (2022) — Saleh draws in viewers with tantalizing images of wealth, glamour, and privilege before revealing the more brutal reality existing behind the facade.

SCREENING
Friday April 10, 9:45pm at The Main
Tuesday April 14, 1:45pm at The Main
TICKETS

 

Happy Birthday
Dir. Sarah Goher (92m, 2025)

Eight-year-old child maid Toha forms a bond with her employer’s daughter, and makes it her mission to ensure that her friend’s impending ninth birthday is a great success, in this thoughtful yet sobering meditation on class relations in Egyptian society.

SCREENING
Sunday April 12, 4:05pm at The Main
Tuesday April 14, 4:40pm at The Main
Saturday April 18, 12pm at Edina Mann Theatre
TICKETS

 

The Little Sister
Dir. Hafsia Herzi (106m, 2025)

When Fatima leaves her close-knit suburban family to study philosophy in Paris, she finds herself caught between her religious upbringing and the freedom of student life in the city.

SCREENING
Friday April 10, 7:03pm at The Main
Saturday April 11, 9:15pm at Edina Mann Theatre
Saturday April 18, 9:30pm at The Main
TICKETS

 

 

Nomad Shadow
Dir. Eimi Imaishi (82m, 2025)

Eimi Imanishi’s poignant debut feature explores the refugee experience through a young Sahrawi woman who’s deported back to Western Sahara, a very different world than she’s used to among a family that still resents her departure.

SCREENING
Friday April 10, 2:15pm at The Main
Monday April 13, 7:20pm at The Main
TICKETS

 

Once Upon a Time in Gaza
Dir. Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser (87m, 2025)

Gaza, 2007. A young student finds work and unlikely kinship with a warm-hearted restaurateur whose side hustle funds survival. Delivery runs become drug drops, and a swaggering policeman with a taste for petty power closes in. Between camaraderie and coercion, the city’s rhythms blur thriller, buddy story and deadpan comedy. Life and spectacle collide, exposing how images can wound or protect and how ordinary men keep going when choices shrink to whatever keeps them alive.

SCREENING
Friday April 10, 9:40pm at The Main
Saturday April 11, 4pm at Capri Theater
TICKETS

 

One in a Million
Dir. Itab Azzam, Jack MacInnes (102m, 2026)

Filmed over 10 years, one girl’s epic journey from Syria to Germany and back again. She and her family navigate war, exile, and heartbreak in a foreign land, illuminating the complexities of the refugee experience. 

Co-directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes bring a palpable blend of sensitivity and nuance to their portrayal of the Syrian refugee Isra’a and her loved ones, following them across time, borders, and shifting circumstances. It is clear that the filmmakers fully realize the weight of the trust and privilege that comes with undertaking a longitudinal project: to witness the experiences, challenges, and quiet joys of a remarkably resilient family forced to leave their beloved Aleppo.

SCREENING
Thursday April 9, 4:15pm at The Main
Thursday April 16, 4:45pm at Edina Mann Theatre
TICKETS

 

A Sad and Beautiful World
Dir. Cyril Aris (109m, 2025)

Born during a tragic massacre in Beirut, Nino and Yasmina are cosmically bound from childhood. Through shared hardships — Nino’s loss of his parents and Yasmina’s parents’ divorce — they forge an unbreakable bond. Yasmina, dreaming of escape, proposes a magical train ride to a remote island. Nino agrees, but their plan is shattered when she moves away. Fate reunites them 24 years later, and despite her cynical view of Beirut and life, Yasmina is captivated by Nino’s optimism. She falls in love, abandoning her emigration plans, and is swept away by their connection. This is a powerful tale of longing, love and destiny, portrayed by performances that remind us of the beauty of life when viewed through love’s lens.

SCREENING
Wednesday April 15, 7:15pm at The Main
Sunday April 19, 4:20pm  at Edina Mann Theatre 
TICKETS

 

Woman and Child
Dir. Saeed Roustayi (131m, 2025)

Mahnaz is 45, a widow, and a single mother, who struggles to find time to be a nurse, care for her elderly father-in-law, and raise two kids, including her unruly teenager, Aliyar. She seems to have found the perfect man in Hamid, an ambulance driver, and is about to marry him, but when Aliyar is suspended, things spiral in ways no one could imagine. Director Saeed Roustaee, who was sentenced to six months in prison by the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Iran for his last film, has crafted a visually stunning film and a blistering critique of the Iranian patriarchy.

SCREENING
Sunday April 12, 6:20pm at The Main
Monday April 13, 9:10pm at The Main
TICKETS