A Palestinian filmmaker's letter to a Lebanese legend lands on one of Europe's oldest festival stages. Mohanad Yaqubi's Revolutionaries Never Die premieres on 9 August 2026 in the Filmmakers of the Present competition at the 79th Locarno Film Festival, the festival confirmed on its official programme page.

The 81-minute film is a cinematic letter from Yaqubi to the late Lebanese filmmaker and war reporter Jocelyne Saab, exploring her filmmaking from 1973 to 1983. Saab, whose 1982 film Beirut My City chronicled the siege of her own city, is the film's subject and its guiding spirit. Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro described the work as paying homage to Saab's legacy and treating her life as a living archive (The Hollywood Reporter).

Yaqubi is the public programmer of the Palestine Film Institute. His previous directing credits include R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity and Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory, both archive-driven works that revisit histories of Palestinian political struggle. Revolutionaries Never Die continues that method, drawing on Saab's footage and surrounding material to build a portrait across a decade of conflict and creativity.

The project was still in post-production last November when it won the $10,000 prize for best project in post-production at the Cairo Film Connection, the industry strand of the Cairo International Film Festival (Screen Daily). By July, the Cairo Film Connection confirmed the film would compete at Locarno 2026 (Cairo Film Connection).

The production credits tell a cross-border story of their own. Yaqubi's company Idioms Film produced, with Sami Saeed credited as producer and Naël Khleifi as co-producer. The film is a co-production of Palestine, Belgium and Qatar, and screens in French, English and Arabic with English and French subtitles. International sales are handled by Square Eyes, the Amsterdam-based sales agent that specialises in auteur cinema.

The Locarno programme lists the film in DCP 2K format, presented in both colour and black and white — a visual texture that suits an archive piece moving between decades and regions. The trailer was unveiled exclusively by Cineuropa on 29 July 2026 (Cineuropa).

What gives the premiere its charge is the chain it closes. Saab filmed wars in the 1970s and 1980s as they happened. Yaqubi, working half a century later, returns to that footage not to document the events again but to trace the gaze of the woman behind the camera. The result is a film about filmmaking as much as it is about the history those films recorded.

For audiences at Locarno, the Filmmakers of the Present competition — a section dedicated to emerging and mid-career directors — offers a first look at a project that has moved from a Cairo pitch to a European festival premiere in under a year.