While on a tense mother-daughter trip, a young woman (Banna Bazzarie) contends with her desire to broaden her horizons while also recognizing the importance of her heritage in Reem Jubran’s UCLA thesis film Don’t Be Long, Little Bird. Seeking some much-needed space from her mother (and a sneaky smoke), the young woman stumbles upon a secluded swimming hole. After taking a dip, she emerges in a different time and place altogether: Ramallah, Palestine circa 1936, a dozen years before the Nakba that would displace civilians and destroy their villages in order to create the state of Israel.
Unsure of how to return home, the protagonist finds herself unexpectedly taken in by a small band of fellow young women, who dub her The Lost One. Though they remark at her stilted Arabic and odd attire, a genuine bond is quickly fostered. As it turns out, the women may have more in common than they realize, eventually discovering an ancestral link that strengthens The Lost One’s connection to her own identity.
Don’t Be Long, Little Bird is one of five winners of the 2025 Student Short Film Showcase, a collaborative program from The Gotham, Focus Features and JetBlue that is available to stream via Focus Features’s YouTube channel and offered in the air as part of JetBlue’s in-flight entertainment selection.
Below, find Jubran’s insight on how her grandmother’s passing inspired the film, the attention to detail she sought in presenting Palestinian embroidery and the myriad challenges of shooting on location amid Israel’s violent occupation.
All interviews with all of the sixth annual Student Short Film Showcase winners are published here.
Filmmaker: How did you decide on attending UCLA for your MFA?
Jubran: UCLA was the obvious choice for me because I am a product of the UC system–I have a B.A. in Film Studies from UC Berkeley (I know, no one chooses Berkeley for film). When I applied, I had been working as assistant director on Palestinian features (the real film school) and I was ready to write and direct my own narrative short film. UCLA was also the easier choice than other American film schools due to proximity to my family, community, and access to scholarships. In a fantasy world, I would have studied film at an artsy school far away in the magical countryside across the world, but alas, UCLA taught me what I needed to know about the industry.
Filmmaker: What was the process of writing Don’t Be Long, Little Bird? Were you influenced by specific folktales, texts or personal experiences?
Jubran: The original idea to make a period film came to me after the passing of my grandmother, Nellie Jamila Ajlouni Saba. She was my closest thing to Palestine growing up, and I wanted to honor her through her beautiful thwab (Palestinian traditional dresses). The idea of a story that follows two young women connected by ancestry from different time periods lived in my head for at least three years. At the time, I was dealing with big realizations as a young woman and I wished for nothing more than to talk to my grandmother about life. I channeled that into the script and wrote it within five days in January ‘23 and we were in production by April ‘23. Writing the script was a therapeutic dream for me; It was a way for me to reconnect with my grandmother and to her Palestine, specifically Palestine before Israel, the version of my homeland that I was robbed of.
As a filmmaker in general, my interests are very influenced by oral-storytelling. Considering the erasure of our history, culture, and general existence, I was fortunate enough to have grandparents that taught me Palestinian Arabic, history, embroidery and cuisine. My grandfather’s Nakba story of exile is ingrained in my memory verbatim. In Palestinian culture pre-Israel, telling folktales was a common tradition and form of entertainment amongst women, men, and children. It was a female-perfected craft. Knowing this, I considered how the stories told by our elders are no longer folkloric or centered on heritage and ancient knowledge, but rather stories of exile and survival from erasure. This notion impacted me rather deeply, and so I wrote a film that brings a traditional folkloric story back to life in order to shed light on Palestinian female strength. The folk tale referenced in Don’t Be Long, Little Bird is from Speak Bird, Speak Again, a collection of Palestinian folktales by Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana.
Filmmaker: To my understanding, you filmed on location in Palestine. How was production affected by Israel’s ongoing occupation? Do you have any updates you can share about the Palestinian crew members that worked on the film?
Jubran: Correct, I filmed on location in Palestine. Film production in Palestine is difficult thanks to the illegal Israeli occupation in many ways: firstly, it adds financial burden. Precious time and energy is wasted and robbed at the hand of the occupier. The Israeli military controls all Palestinian movement in the West Bank making simple travel or movement from one city to another town is extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible. For example, in order for me, my producer, DP, and AD to get to our shooting location for a tech scout, the drive took 3 hours instead of 45 minutes due to the illegal apartheid wall and military checkpoints. The financial burden is further exacerbated due to the need for a large contingency budget because the success of your day depends on the will of the Israeli military. There is zero stability or guarantee of safety in the day-to-day for a Palestinian under occupation. Another addition to the financial burden is a matter of equipment. Due to the occupation, the film industry in Palestine has never had a proper chance to develop and blossom. Thus, equipment is limited. Palestinian filmmakers in the West Bank are presented with limited options unless a team member carries foreign citizenship (like me), and has the right to cross the checkpoints, through the apartheid wall, and into Israel in order to access unlimited industry standard equipment. This however is not preferred, but sometimes necessary. In other words, shooting movies under occupation is more difficult than anyone who has not traveled to Palestine can imagine. It’s as indie filmmaking as it gets.
With that said, the Palestinian people are the most welcoming and hospitable in the world. In spite of the occupation, the support of the community is unmatched and the crew members I had the privilege to work with treated my film with immense respect, hard work, and incredible attitudes. There is no other crew I’ve worked with that has greater respect, love, and appreciation for filmmaking. The crew I worked with are continuously and currently working hard, against all odds, to get their work produced, and out into the world. I believe that if people had any idea about filmmaking in Palestine, they would appreciate and value Palestinian cinema a little more. It’s truly worth every minute to watch, especially in a world where art and cinema is becoming more and more formulaic. Good cinema is meant to wake your senses, not put you to sleep!
Filmmaker: The bucolic wilderness and beautiful garb add a layer of intrigue alongside the film’s mystical plot. How did you find this location and source the costumes for the film?
Jubran: The gorgeous locations we shot at were found by my producer and I driving on the outskirts villages of the Bethlehem region, searching for land that remains untouched by Israeli settler-colonialism. This search was extremely difficult because Occupied Palestine is littered with illegal settlements. We were lucky to shoot in the mountains, but it was risky because the land is controlled by the Israeli military. We secured permission to shoot there, but under Israeli occupation, safety is never guaranteed.
The costumes were supplied by a local collector of traditional clothing. Palestinian embroidery is one of the most precious things to us in our culture, and we did our best to present outfits that were accurate to the village that the film took place in (Ramallah) and the period that we time traveled to: 1936. Palestinian embroidery is a dense form of identity, pride, and history. Every village in historic Palestine has its distinguished style of embroidery and certain motifs and symbols on those dresses represent the history of those areas. Story-telling exists in every layer of our culture.
Filmmaker: Do you have plans to helm a feature in the near future?
Jubran: I am developing the feature version of Don’t Be Long, Little Bird and I’m very excited about it because it’s going to be a much bigger story. I’m looking forward to expanding on the American/Palestinian dichotomic identity through a longer and more complex story.