Outside the crowded entrance of the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, Gisella Castagna sat at the front of a line.
Ms. Castagna, a Barnard student, had arrived about four hours early to snag a ticket last month for a sold-out 8:45 p.m. screening of “Edward Said: Between Worlds,” a documentary about the Palestinian American scholar and activist.
Mr. Said died in 2003, before Ms. Castagna, 21, was born. But his ideas on Palestinian self-determination have resonated with her recently, particularly as she helped organize the pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia University.
“A lot of us do point to his words,” she said.
After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in Israel that killed about 1,200 people and the war in Gaza that killed roughly 68,000 Palestinians thrust the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back into the spotlight, Mr. Said’s words — which he shared through countless lectures, columns and books — have found new life.
The film, which made its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival, comes after a cease-fire last year between Israel and Hamas, but tensions have not subsided. Israeli strikes have continued; public figures have been criticized for taking sides, or not; and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is under pressure ahead of an election this month.
The screening was a homecoming of sorts: Mr. Said was a fixture of the Upper West Side as a professor at Columbia University for nearly 40 years.
In the documentary, Mr. Said narrates his life story through video and audio clips pieced together by the Danish American filmmaker Maiken Baird and Sarah Mowaswes, one of its producers.
“Between Worlds” opens with grainy 8-millimeter home videos from 1930s Jerusalem. Viewers see archival news clips about the creation of Israel and the displacement of Palestinians, and Mr. Said moving from Cairo to Massachusetts and eventually New York. After the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, the film shows Mr. Said becoming politically active, writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and working alongside organizers and leaders.
Ms. Baird, 60, was inspired to make the film after Oct. 7, 2023. “I just couldn’t help but think back on Edward Said, how much I had learned from him,” she said. Growing up, she was told about the Nazi occupation of Denmark and the creation of a Jewish state, but became curious about what had happened to the “native inhabitants of the land,” she said. Years later, she read Mr. Said’s 1979 book “The Question of Palestine.”
“Then it all came together,” she said.
Ms. Baird approached Mr. Said’s widow, Mariam C. Said, and daughter, Najla Said, who became a consulting producer on the movie. “It seemed like the perfect way to bring him back at the right time,” his daughter said.
Ms. Baird, whose father was friends with Mr. Said, grew up overhearing their conversations, which partly influenced her to study at Columbia in the 1980s, where she said Mr. Said was “the most popular professor.”
Off campus, things were more complicated. In 1989, an essay he wrote was criticized as promoting terrorism. In 2001, he faced backlash after he was photographed throwing stones toward an Israeli guardhouse in Lebanon. His office had been vandalized; death threats were common. One clip in “Between Worlds” shows that he faced opposition from Arabs who thought he was too moderate.
Ms. Mowaswes, 32, said in an email that “the sheer fact that he is a Palestinian born in Palestine is considered ‘controversial’ to some.”
Making an independent film is never easy, but “the issue with getting this kind of narrative funded in America is that you’re not going to get any institutional support,” Ms. Baird said. Most of the funding, she added, came from people who hoped to start nuanced dialogue about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On the night of the premiere, the theater was packed with some of Mr. Said’s old friends and colleagues. The Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who founded the now destroyed Edward Said Public Library in Gaza, walked out holding back tears. He said it was “enraging” to see that the issues Mr. Said addressed “continue to unfold today.”
Victor Kovner, who met Mr. Said in the 1980s, said, “It was thrilling to see him.”
Mr. Kovner, 89, is a founder of J Street, an organization that supports Israel and “the security and freedom of both Israelis and Palestinians,” according to its website. Though he and his wife, Sarah Kovner, are in favor of a two-state solution, that did not get in the way of their friendship with Mr. Said.
“You could talk about it with him,” Ms. Kovner said. “You could disagree but not in a way that was disagreeable.”
Reflecting on the war in Gaza, Mr. Said’s widow said her husband “would have been appalled, because all of his writings are about humanism.” Yet others at the screening said he would have been heartened to see growing support for Palestinians.
Ms. Baird is hopeful that more audiences will be drawn to Mr. Said’s story.
“Even if they don’t like what they’re hearing,” she said, “they have to acknowledge his humanity and his truth.”
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