The 19th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival is getting underway on Wednesday.

St. Paul-based arts organization Mizna's annual festival puts a spotlight on narrative films, documentaries, and short films from Arab and SWANA-based (Southwest Asian and North African) filmmakers, with five days of screenings, panels, workshops, and celebrations.

The festival opens with Thank You for Banking With Us, a Palestinian film by director Laila Abbas, who will be in attendance for the event.

Abbas' opening-night event is one of six Palestinian features on the slate of 23 films. That includes a free outdoor screening of Elia Suleiman's 2002 love story, Divine Intervention. That will take place under the Third Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis on Thursday.

That programming evokes the festival's mission of put

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