Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara 
CWC Global: Foragers
- Thursday, October 23, 2025 / 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (PDT)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: 4K digital projection (64 minutes)
- With Rabea Eghbariah (Harvard Law School) and Sherene Seikaly (History, UCSB)
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Director: Jumana Manna
Foragers (2022) examines the fraught politics around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee, and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary, and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these practices and customs. These restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and thyme-like za’atar and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. The Israeli government insists that these laws reflect scientific expertise and the government’s duty to protect the environment, while Palestinian foragers argue that these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that dispossesses them from their land. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from chases between the foragers and nature patrol to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the joy and knowledge embodied in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film raises questions around the politics of extinction: namely, who determines what is made extinct and what is able to live on in the wild.
For this special event presented in conjunction with the Climate Justice Working Group, our screening of Foragers was followed by a recorded Zoom conversation between documentary co-writer Rabea Eghbariah (Harvard Law School) and moderator David Pellow (Environmental Studies, UCSB). Pellow then joined Sherene Seikaly (History, UCSB) for a live discussion of the film.
Biographies
Rabea Eghbariah (documentary co-writer)
Rabea Eghbariah is a lawyer and legal scholar completing his doctorate at Harvard Law School. He served as an appellate public defender before joining Adalah Legal Center in Haifa, where he litigated landmark Palestinian rights cases. His scholarship on the Nakba as a legal concept has gained wide recognition, and he co-wrote the script of the film Foragers with filmmaker Jumana Manna.
Sherene Seikaly (History, UCSB)
Sherene Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2016). She is the Editor of Journal of Palestine Studies, Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UCSB, and co-editor of Jadaliyya.
Moderator David Pellow (Environmental Studies, UCSB)
David Pellow is the Dehlsen Chair and Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at UCSB. His teaching and research focus on environmental and ecological justice in the U.S. and globally. He is the author and co-author or co-editor of several books, including: What is Critical Environmental Justice? and Total Liberation: The Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement.
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center and the Climate Justice Working Group.
CWC Global
Media are global by nature; they express culture just as much as they transcend borders. The CWC Global series is dedicated to showcasing media from around the world. This series features screenings and events that place UCSB in conversation with international media makers and global contexts across our deeply connected world.
CWC Docs
The Carsey-Wolf Center is committed to screening documentaries from across the world that engage with contemporary and historical issues, especially regarding social justice and environmental concerns. Documentaries allow filmmakers to address pressing issues and frame the critical debates of our time.