Established in 2003, the Arab Film Festival has featured local debuts of independent narrative and documentary features and short films from more than fifteen countries. Over its twelve editions, our festival has created a necessary space in the Twin Cities for Arab and Muslim filmmakers to tell their stories in beautiful and innovative ways. The festival seeks to provide Arab American and Arab film artists support and exposure, build the local Arab American community, and present to the general public the diverse ways in which Arabs view themselves and the world they live in through the powerful and accessible medium of film. For the larger audience, the festival provides the chance to encounter Arab / Arab American communities on their own terms, revealing the heterogeneity of Arab peoples, and providing a rich, complex, and true source of cultural understanding. Films in the festival are, for the most part, not in wide distribution, and are therefore otherwise unavailable to Twin Cities audiences. This year our project feels more urgent than ever, as our programming serves a response to national and international policies that target the lives of immigrants and refugees, while also tackling the global threat of xenophobia and Islamophobia.