The Cup Reader

Warde, shamed as a young girl yet renowned in Palestine for her mystical seeing and matchmaking lives with her sister Jaleleh and reads the fortunes of her clients. Each woman has made or will make a choice between love and marriage, not having had the luxury of both.

Duration : 12

Release date : 2013

Country : Palestine

Biography

Creates films that explore the displacement of immigrant communities. A Palestinian-American who grew up in Ohio, Araj became a filmmaker to reflect the Arab experiences that she felt were not represented on screen. The Cup Reader, a comedy shot in Palestine about a fortune teller and her matchmaking abilities, screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and was awarded the Next Great Filmmaker Award at the Berkshire International Film Festival and Baghdad International Film Festival. Araj followed with her film Pioneer High, about a Palestinean high schooler in 1969 who unknowingly starts a revolution by defying the school’s skirts-only policy. She has received support for her work from the Sundance Film Festival, Torino Film Lab, Independent Filmmaker Project, Berlinale Talent Project Market, Center for Asian American Media and Cine Qua Non Lab. She is the 2018 recipient of Tribeca/Chanel Through Her Lens production funding for her new film Rosa, which tells the story of a woman who begins a business to ship undocumented immigrants to their home countries for burial. The film won the Best Short Narrative Award and the Lions gate/STARZ Short Film Award at BlackStar Film Festival, and the Best Short Narrative Award at the Woodstock Film Festival.

Suha Araj Director of The Cup Reader