Twin Cities Arab Film Festival

About Mizna and TCAFF: We are a St.Paul, Minnesota-based critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. Established in 2003, Mizna’s Twin Cities Arab Film Festival (TCAFF) debuts independent narrative, documentary, and experimental features and short films from more than fifteen Arabic-speaking countries and their diasporas. The festival puts SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) filmmakers at all career stages in critical dialogue with one another and with Mizna audiences. Each year, Minnesota and US audiences gather to enjoy the varied ways that SWANA artists represent and montage their social realities.

In addition to exhibiting films, TCAFF hosts panel discussions, dialogues, and performances, capturing and engaging with the complexity of the Arabic-speaking world and its diverse narratives. TCAFF screens classic and contemporary dramas, comedies, documentaries, science fiction films, and experimental video projects, including the work of filmmakers from countries like Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, and Morocco. TCAFF exhibits all films in their original languages with English subtitles.

Our mission: Mizna presents contemporary, critical, and experimental art, writing, and film centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists.

Named City Page’s Nonprofit of the Year in 2020 and a Regional Cultural Treasure in 2021, we publish Mizna, an award-winning SWANA lit and art journal; produce the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, the largest and longest running Arab film fest in the Midwest; and offer classes, readings, performances, public art, and community events, having featured over 400 local and global writers, filmmakers, and artists.