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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - A bit of the Arab world is coming to Ann Arbor Thursday.

The 2014 Arab Film Festival kicks off this year at the historic Michigan Theater with a screening of “When I Saw You,” a coming-of-age story set in 1967 from Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir. The film, which starts at 7:30 p.m., follows an 11-year-old boy who tries to walk home to Palestine from a Jordanian refugee camp.

The film festival will then continue Friday and Saturday at its traditional home, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, with four separate programs featuring a short and feature-length film. It concludes Saturday with a showing of the documentary “The Lebanese Rocket Story,” which centers on a university professor’s efforts in the 1960s to bring his students and Lebanon into the space age.

Other films being shown at the festival include “Professor,” about the human rights situation in Tunisia; “When Monaliza Smiled,” about a grumpy woman in her 30s who has romantic fantasies; and the short “Though I Know the River is Dry,” in which a man returns to Palestine from the U.S., encountering unexpected memories.

*Detroit News