For more than twenty years, Hind has lived a marriage shaped by absence. Her spouse is serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison, one of thousands of Palestinian men incarcerated far from their families. Visits are rare, physical contact is forbidden, and intimacy is impossible. Yet Hind still dreams of becoming a mother. Through an extraordinary underground network, Palestinian prisoners have found a way to smuggle their sperm out of prison, allowing their wives to conceive through IVF. The film follows Hind through the intimate stages of this journey: secret phone calls, medical appointments, moments of hope, and devastating uncertainty. Interwoven with Hindʼs story are the voices of other women, doctors, and former prisoners who reveal the human cost of incarceration beyond prison walls. The film moves between domestic spaces and heavily restricted institutions, showing how love, desire, and parenthood persist even under extreme control. Told entirely through real-time observation, the film reframes motherhood not as a private desire, but as a space shaped by power, control, and enforced absence. It offers an intimate, restrained portrait of women whose bodies become quiet sites of resistance, and of lives suspended between waiting, hope, and the cost of endurance. The film For Life had its world premiere at the Visions du Réel 2026 International Film Festival in Nyon (Switzerland).

When war and occupation become part of everyday reality, the meaning of ordinary life changes too. Seeing loved ones seems impossible, safety and security become a rarity, and bringing a child into the world turns into an act of resistance. In the post-screening discussion, the guests – Salma Al Henami, who is of Slovak-Yemeni origin, Lebanese-born Rami Jacob, and Julián Vrábel, who spent two months in the West Bank – will explore what family means when it is shaped not only by love, but also by perseverance and the struggle for survival.

The discussion will be held in Slovak and will be interpreted into Slovak Sign Language.

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Funded by the European Union.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the European Union or the European Agency for Education and Culture (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA assumes any responsibility for them.

The event is also accessible with audio description and descriptive subtitles thanks to the IncluCine 2 project, which is being implemented as part of the Collaborate to Innovate initiative under the auspices of Europa Cinemas and is funded by the Creative Europe – MEDIA program.