Void Network in collaboration with Old Palestine House and FilmPoetry Digital Archive presents FREE WORDS- A Poet from Gaza, a documentary screening about the Palestinian Pulitzer Awarded poet Mosab Abu Toha, directed by Abdullah Harun İlhan.
The screening will follow open public online discussion with the poet Mosab Abu Toha and the film director. The event explores the power of poetic expression during war and catastrophe, focusing on voices emerging from Gaza and the broader Palestinian struggle for freedom and dignity.
FREE WORDS- A Poet from Gaza
Directed by Abdullah Harun İlhan
FRIDAY 29 MAY 2026
Starts 19.00
Old House Palestine – Brighton
20-22 Gloucester Place BN1 4AA
free entrance / solidarity donations for Old House Palestine
Organized by:
Void Network http://voidnetwork.gr
Film Poetry FREE Digital Archive http://filmpoetry.org
An evening of poetry, resistance, memory and international solidarity with the people of Palestine. At a time when genocide, displacement and censorship attempt to silence an entire people, poetry remains a living force of resistance. “Free Words” brings together poetry, oral history and visual material from Gaza, creating a collective space where language becomes testimony, mourning, revolt and hope.
As Gaza endures its darkest chapter—where children die from starvation while the world debates politics—the voices of Palestinian writers and poets carry an unbearable weight. These are not distant literary figures crafting abstract art, but witnesses documenting genocide in real time, their words emerging from beneath bombardment, from hospitals under siege, from refugee camps where entire families have been erased.
“Free Words: A Poet from Gaza,” directed by Abdullah Harun İlhan, takes on profound urgency. The documentary follows Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, whose voice emerges from the epicenter of what international legal experts increasingly recognize as genocide. Through intimate interviews and readings of Mosab’s work, İlhan’s documentary reveals what it means to bear witness when survival itself becomes uncertain. This is not poetry emerging from general hardship, but testimony from within an active campaign of extermination where Palestinian life is treated as expendable.
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, writer and educator born in the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza in 1992. Growing up under occupation and repeated wars, his life and work have been deeply shaped by exile, memory, destruction and the daily struggle of Palestinian existence. In 2017 he founded the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language public library, creating an important cultural space for young readers and writers in Gaza.
His first poetry collection, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear (2022), received international acclaim, winning the Palestine Book Award and the American Book Award. His writings combine personal testimony with poetic language, documenting life, loss and survival in Gaza.
After surviving the war on Gaza and being detained by the Israeli army while attempting to flee with his family in 2023, Abu Toha continued to write and speak internationally about the Palestinian experience. In 2025 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his essays in The New Yorker, recognized for portraying “the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza” with “the intimacy of memoir.”
When Mosab was detained by Israeli forces, the international literary community’s response underscored a crucial truth: Palestinian voices matter precisely because their silencing is systematic, deliberate, and part of a broader project of cultural destruction.
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Void Network is an international anarchist, cultural affinity group first appeared in 1990 in Athens / Greece – aiming global social revolution and all humans liberation from ignorance, suffering and exploitation.
FilmPoetry.org is a free open archive of 500 poetry films, an international platform dedicated to democratizing filmmaking and artistic expression through experimental storytelling, video poetry and socially engaged art.
Old Palestine House, aims to strengthen connections between local communities, artists and international solidarity movements supporting Palestine.
Void Network http://voidnetwork.gr
Film Poetry FREE Digital Archive http://filmpoetry.org
