Diana Al Halabi

The Battle of Empty Stomachs (2024) is an experimental short film that juxtaposes two types of political hunger; famine, and hunger strikes, rendering the digestive system a political battlefield. While top-down hunger pushes people to flee, bottom-up hunger uses the digestive system as a last resort to protest human rights.
Based on research and interviews with both Palestinian hunger strikers and asylum seekers, this absurdist yet realist film stages a dialogue between the director and her mother tongue that centers on a single question: what do we know about hunger? This film is a poetic and musical tribute to those who suffered the aftermath of famine and migration, and to Palestinian hunger strikers whose resistance outlives the deafening silence of the colonial world.