Through the eyes of two Palestinian children, a portrait of memory, exile, and everyday life in Shatila refugee camp.

As we remember the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 16–18 September 1982, we turn not only to the violence of those days, but to the lives and communities that continued in their aftermath.

For many people around the world, the name Shatila became inseparable from the massacre of 1982. But Shatila is also a place of family, childhood, memory, and generations of Palestinian displacement.

Filmed in the late 1990s, Children of Shatila follows Farah, 11, and Issa, 12, two Palestinian children growing up in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. Fifty years after their grandparents were forced into exile from Palestine, they are navigating what it means to grow up as refugees in a camp shaped by massacre, siege, poverty, and displacement.

Director Mai Masri gives Farah and Issa video cameras, allowing them to document Shatila through their own eyes. Through their memories, friendships, daily lives, and hopes for the future, the film offers an intimate portrait of a generation born into exile, carrying the memory of a homeland they have never known.

1998 · 50 minutes · Arabic with English subtitles