Locarno 2026: Revolutionaries Never Die | Interview with Mohanad Yaqubi

Presented in the Official Selection of the 79th Locarno Film Festival, Revolutionaries Never Die is a moving cinematic letter addressed to Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab — and, in many ways, to humanity as a whole. Two months before her death, Saab invited Mohanad Yaqubi to collaborate with her. Left unanswered, that invitation became the starting point for a posthumous dialogue, built from a decade of footage Saab filmed in Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, and Western Sahara.

By paying tribute to the prolific filmmaker’s archive, Yaqubi honours an engaged filmmaker who documented war, exile, and resistance at a deeply human level, giving a voice and a face to those so often pushed to the margins of history and its media narratives. Far from sensationalist, Saab’s images bear witness to the violence of conflict and its intimate consequences, while retaining an extraordinary sense of life.

Without ever appropriating Saab’s images, Yaqubi instead creates a powerful act of remembrance and transmission: carrying Saab’s legacy forward and allowing the singular, deeply human force of her work to resonate once again today. On the occasion of the 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, we had the pleasure of speaking with filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi.

How did you structure the film? Did the Jocelyne Saab Foundation suggest a framework for interpreting the filmmaker’s work?

Mohanad Yaqubi: Inspired by the inventory of Jocelyne Saab’s films produced between 1973 and 1983, the main body of the film follows a chronological structure based on the year of production of these films. Running parallel to this timeline is an epistolary dialogue I maintain with Jocelyne, transforming the core narrative into something that evokes a flashback, or more accurately, a sense of déjà vu.

A few months after Jocelyne’s passing, I met with Mathilde Rouxel without any initial intention of making a film. Our sole objective was to guarantee that Jocelyne’s films were preserved, restored, and introduced to a broader audience. Mathilde joined our team at the KASK Film Lab (School of the Arts, Ghent), where we systematically examined the boxes Jocelyne had collected and left within the CNC archives. This archival effort was coupled with meticulous documentation, which involved transcribing all information found on the boxes, reels, and reel covers. Ultimately, the structure and framework of our project emerged organically from this very process.

At the beginning, our main aim of the research was to create a detailed inventory, which was published by the Sharjah Art Foundation in a book titled “Jocelyne Saab Inventory; 1973-1983”. This book works as an archive for the films, where 16 films are transcribed and a full reels’ inventory included with photographic documentation. In this publication, a dialogue between me and Mathilde was recorded and included, that was the base of the film structure.

At the same time, the film Revolutionary Never Die documents my own thoughts and emotions, during and after the genocidal war on Gaza, capturing moments of loss and mourning. And although it is strictly made of archival films, looking at it from today, creates a temporal anomaly that brings the two timelines together somewhere under the ruins of a destroyed house.  

What strikes you as most unique and powerful about Jocelyne Saab’s journalistic and cinematic approach?

Mohanad Yaqubi: The diversity and complexity of the subjects she explored revealed an extraordinary sense of justice—an effort to amend the world through the medium of cinema. Upon repeatedly watching her work, I was deeply struck on both a personal and cinematic level by the decisions Jocelyne made during that era. She recognized her privileges with absolute honesty, confronting and converting them into powerful instruments for storytelling. In our film, we traced these subtle gestures scattered across her entire collection, drawing these moments closer together on a timeline to offer a window into the emotional portrait of a filmmaker navigating the intense conditions of the 1970s Arab world.

I also was amazed by her genuine gaze, her unique ability to notice everyone, from the youngest children to the elderly, giving shapes and colors to the spaces she enters, ensuring her cinematic choices always reinforced her political message. This distinct Arab woman’s gaze manifested as a profound fascination with the everyday textures of life within revolutionary movements—whether she was connecting with students supporting their families in Palestinian refugee camps or observing freedom fighters training inside a cave. Her camera did far more than simply report on a struggle or a cause; it captured enduring cultural traditions, conveying a powerful sense of stability and continuity. 

Although she documents conflicts and experiences of exile, Jocelyne Saab created images imbued with an incredible vitality. What value do you place on these treasures she gathered?

Mohanad Yaqubi: Captured over time, these films document the potential of an alternative path—a project of Arab modernity that feels overly romantic by today’s standards. Viewing her films today becomes a poignant reminder of our collective societal failures as Arabic speaking nations, having surrendered to neoliberal economic realities as the single route to stability, safety, and prosperity in this turbulent region, completely disregarding the deep-seated consciousness and long history of colonization. This profound connection to the Arab world empowered her to ask critical questions, and her unwavering dedication ensured she found answers.

By documenting the social and political climate of that era, Jocelyne’s films offer the audience a window into a reality completely overlooked by mainstream media. At the same time, because these films chronicle her own life, they possess a distinct autobiographical quality that challenges standard journalistic approaches to current affairs. Ultimately, we witness the journey of a woman fighting to establish her unique voice and cinematic style in a world dominated by empty political slogans and endless debates. She carved out her own space at that table without political affiliation or loud metaphors, keeping her work raw, direct, and deeply intimate.

Could you tell us about your relationship with the raw material of your film? Rather than appropriating Jocelyne Saab’s work, you manage to bring it to life and create a dialogue with it. How did you approach working with the archive footage of another filmmaker?

Mohanad Yaqubi: A significant portion of the collection consists of “copy zero” reels. This specific stage in post-production involves splicing together the chosen shots into a single master reel, which is then duplicated onto a 16 mm projection reel. Working with these materials felt like encountering a creative process frozen in time, almost as if Jocelyne’s spirit was present alongside us in the restoration lab. It was extraordinary to explore a collection preserved exactly as she had arranged it. Her handwriting and personal touch were visible across all the storage boxes, 16 mm optical components, and magnetic reels.

Engaging deeply with these archival traces of Jocelyne fostered a profound connection to the material, inherently yielding a sense of intimacy and clarity. We began to recognize subtle variations in Jocelyne’s voice, prompting us to wonder: was she fatigued, or perhaps hesitant at this moment? Was there an underlying disturbance unfolding just beyond the film’s frames? At certain points during the editing process, Elettra Bisogno (film editor) and I could distinctly perceive Jocelyne shifting her camera’s position to draw nearer to a character, allowing us to sense the deliberate, searching journey she undertook to convey the narrative.

Working with the films of other directors makes me reflect on my own path. This is now my third feature film focused on the same core theme: the Palestinian struggle and the fundamental right of a people to access their collective memory, ensuring its continuity from one generation to the next. This is naturally the mission of filmmakers and artists, so I ground myself in these memories and build my narratives from there. By sharing the stories within these archives, we are not only preserving the films themselves but also safeguarding the filmic testimonies of the creators who made them.

Did immersing yourself in Jocelyne Saab’s work make you reflect on your own filmmaking practice?

Mohanad Yaqubi: The true significance of engaging with Jocelyne Saab’s cinema only fully registered with me when I experienced a closely parallel loss—the destruction of my family home, my room, and my memories during the intense genocide in Gaza. in her film (Beirut, My City, 1983) I was profoundly drawn to her capacity to stand directly in front of the camera, microphone in hand, to assert her identity as a filmmaker and reclaim her home. I long to do the same: to stand before my family home in Gaza and point out to the audience where my room used to be. Yet, the utter viciousness of the last three years and the escalated assault on the Palestinian people, their land, and their identity make it difficult to believe in cinema and image-making as meaningful forms of resistance or contribution. Recent experience suggests that no one is listening, or if they are, they choose to do nothing. In the face of such relentless tyranny, brutality, and the total erosion of justice, one is left questioning what a film can achieve.

Revolutionaries Never Die is produced by Idioms Film, with Sami Saeed and Mohanad Yaqubi as producers, Rita Maria Habib as associate producer, and Casey Asprooth-Jackson as post-production producer. The film is co-produced by Nael Khliefi of Sourat Films and Ulrike Lindmayr and Vincent Stroep of Escautville, with Mohamad Jabaly of Palartic and Elhum Shakerifar of Hakawati serving as executive producers.