Edward Said: Between Worlds

About

Following AFMI’s early spotlight on the project at the 2025 Arab Film Festival, filmmaker Maiken Baird returns to AFF with the completed Edward Said: Between Worlds, an archival documentary examining the life, ideas, and enduring legacy of Palestinian-American scholar, author, and public intellectual Edward Said. Told through archival material and Said’s own words, the film follows his journey from his childhood in Jerusalem and displacement in 1948 through his academic career at Columbia University and his emergence as one of the twentieth century’s most influential cultural critics and advocates for the Palestinian people. Said’s landmark work Orientalism fundamentally changed how generations of scholars, artists, and cultural institutions understand the ways the Arab world has been represented by the West. Nearly five decades after the book’s publication, its questions about representation, cultural power, identity, and who gets to tell whose story remain deeply connected to AFMI’s own mission.