75 SHOTS: In The Spotlight
In The Spotlight with Omar Gabriel, June 12, 2026
di 75 SHOTS
After his film was featured in our monthly screening spotlight, we met with filmmaker Omar Gabriel for a live Q&A session to discuss his work. Directed by Omar Gabriel, Don't Take My Joy Away follows two friends in Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp. Omar and Omar revel in the small joys of life until violence suddenly disrupts their world. Forced to flee, they embark on a dangerous journey of survival, confronting fear, chaos, and the stark realities around them. Along the way, they must choose between remaining in the shadows or seeking the light. Omar Gabriel is a Lebanese artist, photographer, and filmmaker whose work is grounded in a poetic yet raw visual language, shaped by emotional intimacy. His multidisciplinary practice unfolds through film, digital and analog photography, video, collage, and installation. He creates immersive narratives that inhabit the space between memory and lived experience. His work explores freedom, love, gender, and identity, tracing the subtle and often unspoken tensions shaping contemporary life across the Arab world. Omar reveals the layered and sometimes contradictory nature of Arab identities, resisting simplification and honoring the singularity within each experience. His work has been presented internationally at Bienal’23 Fotografia do Porto, Casa Árabe, Institut du Monde Arabe, Rhode Island International Film Festival, and Everybody’s Perfect Film Festival.
After his film was featured in our monthly screening spotlight, we met with documentary filmmaker Carl Collison for a live Q&A session to discuss his work. Still My Child follows the journeys of three South African fathers as they navigate fear, confusion, social stigma, and community discrimination before ultimately arriving at a place of unconditional love and acceptance for their transgender children. Through intimate conversations and personal reflection, the film offers a moving portrait of parenthood, transformation, and the emotional labor of unlearning deeply rooted beliefs. Directed by Carl Collison for Beyond the Margins, the documentary approaches these stories with tenderness and honesty, foregrounding the voices of families often left out of broader conversations on gender identity and belonging. Carl Collison, a documentary filmmaker, has been an important part of the 75 SHOTS family from the very beginning. His earlier film No Gay Men in Zimbabwe was featured in the first edition of Under The Radar, and he has remained part of the community ever since. A variety of his works are included in the Cinema Feast Collection. Last year, members of 75 SHOTS attended Collison’s Purple Mountain Residency in South Africa to meet in person for the first time and create the film Nuit Eternelle. Now, we join him again for a screening of his new film Still My Child, which recently made the African Trans Network’s list of 5 must-see documentaries.