In many ways, electronic music producer and self-described “Arab bass dropper” Samer Saim Eldahr, who goes by the stage name Hello Psychaleppo, has a typical Syrian story. More than a decade ago, after the start of the war in Syria, he left his hometown of Aleppo for Beirut, and has relocated numerous times since. But that might be the only typical thing about Eldahr, 35. Today, the musician draws large, international crowds has booked shows in Paris, Berlin, Beirut, and Osnabrück, Germany. And he is slated to share a West Philadelphia stage on Saturday, August 10 with renowned Sudanese band Alsarah & The Nubatones.

Philadelphia’s BlackStar Film Festival is set to kick off on August 1st. Opening day programming features films that hail from Brazil, Manila, the American Midwest, Pakistan, and more. And though this year’s offerings are as emblematically diverse and probing as ever, if you ask festival director Nehad Khader what makes the right kind of BlackStar film, her answer is an evocative commentary on both film and artmaking in a time of sociopolitical upheaval: “We like to look for films that break something,” Khader told Al-Bustan. “Maybe they’re breaking form or breaking genre. Or doing something really unexpected… But think of those films that make you ask questions. That challenge you to think outside of what you already believe.”

For Trenton-based artist Alia Bensliman, putting women at the center of her work is a responsibility she inherited from her late grandmother, the prominent Tunisian feminist Asma Belkhodja. Belkhodja served as the first Secretary General of the Union of Tunisian Women when the nation gained independence from France in 1956, and she was a singular and formative influence on her young granddaughter. “Because of my family,” Bensliman told Al-Bustan in an interview, “I grew up with the vocabulary of women’s rights.”