Mark your calendars for Shattered Justice, Shattered Lives: Counternarrating the War on Terror through Muslim Eyes, which will be held online on November 11-13, 2021. We’ll view documentaries and original short films, and host discussions with the filmmakers as well as activists, journalists, storytellers, and individuals affected by state repression.

The festival will critically challenge 20 years of false media narratives about Muslims and the human cost of the war. We’ll highlight the resilience and creativity of those who have been misrepresented and targeted.

We’ll screen three acclaimed documentaries: Guantanamo’s Child (2015), Feeling of Being Watched (2018), and White Fright (2018) and the winning entries in the festival’s short films contest. By centering Muslims in narratives as they have experienced the trauma of continual war and surveillance, we aim to counter the two decades of lies and Islamophobia.

Submissions allowing, we will also show winning selections on the final day of the film festival.

Please join Justice for Muslims Collective, + Peace, Halal and Queer Collective, Defending Rights and Dissent, and Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative for this important event.

For more info, visit: https://www.justiceformuslims.org/events/shattered-justice-shattered-lives

Awards & Prizes

Submissions selected will be awarded $250 (USD) and shown on the final day of the Film Festival, November 13, 2021.

Rules & Terms

Given the vast diversity of the Muslim community along racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, sexual orientation, and gender identity lines, among other differences, it is difficult to capture a collective experience.

In order to paint a picture of the different experiences Muslims have had since the 9/11 attacks, we are seeking shorts directed, scripted, and/or filmed by Muslim-identified folks (whatever that means to you!) that reflect on the effects of the War on Terror two decades after the towers' collapse.

Submissions can be in any genre from slice of life to futuristic to musical, etc, and can cover any range of topics about the War on Terror from the Patriot Act to CVE programs to wars abroad in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Shorts should be between 10 to 15 minutes and should be the filmmaker's own work (film should have been made within the last year; open-source footage/stock video is fine as long as appropriated footage is noted in credits).

In submitting an entry to the film festival, you give Justice for Muslims Collective the right to use a trailer, stills, pics, and posters for promotional purposes in various film magazines, social media, the website, etc. Filmmakers retain full rights to their work.

We ask that you strongly consider accessibility accommodations in your submission and include captions if possible.

International submissions accepted.