San Diego Filmmaker Tells Story of Brave Little Palestinian Girl

Over the weekend, Pakistani-American filmmaker Farheen Pasha Umar debuted her latest documentary in San Diego. Farah recounts the heart-wrenching story of a three-year-old Palestinian girl who lost her mother and suffered third-degree burns when a bomb went off near her house in Gaza in 2009.

The girl was brought to San Diego’s Pomerado Hospital, where she went through multiple surgeries before eventually returning to the Middle East. Umar, who has two children of her own, tells the San Diego Union-Tribune that the making of this film was an extremely emotional process:

“It was exhausting and there was a lot of crying. I’m definitely ready for a much lighter subject.”

Along with a second local screening, the Rancho Bernardo based Umar plans to submit the 50-minute documentary to Sundance and other film festivals. She switched to the movie profession from finance after the 9/11 attacks, and saw her previous effort, Women of Islam: Veiling and Seclusion, broadcast nationally on PBS.