By tackling often overlooked societal issues, Palestinian-born Sami Kafati’s body of work has shaped Honduran cinema even years after his passing.

The Japanese style of animation known as anime is underpinned with narratives of community, loyalty and collective purpose. Its ubiquity feeds a growing appetite for the art form, becoming popular in the Middle East.

Avoiding main roads due to threats to his life, in 622 CE the Prophet Muhammad and his followers escaped north from Makkah to Madinah by riding through the rugged western Arabian Peninsula along path whose precise contours have been traced only recently. Known as the Hijrah, or migration, their eight-day journey became the beginning of the Islamic calendar, and this spring, the exhibition "Hijrah: In the Footsteps of the Prophet," at Ithra in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, explored the journey itself and its memories-as-story to expand understandings of what the Hijrah has meant both for Muslims and the rest of a the world. "This is a story that addresses universal human themes," says co-curator Idries Trevathan.

Since the 1970s, independent filmmakers have been a rare breed throughout the Arabic-speaking world. But as a rising number of film festivals and streaming platforms open, opportunities for both artistic expression and viewing experiences are growing faster than ever.

In 1919 American journalist and filmmaker Lowell Thomas glamorized British Army officer Thomas Edward Lawrence first in war propaganda and then in commercial cinema. His show traveled the world and gave birth to one of the most popular modern legends of Western involvement in the Middle East.