FILM FROM PALESTINE

British-Palestinian writer-director Farah Nabulsi had a successful career in London as a stockbroker. Then, in 2013, her first trip to Palestine in 25 years changed her life. During family trips as a child, she had not understood the scale of the hardship experienced by Palestinians. As an adult, however, she grasped the dehumanisation they suffered daily and seized the urge to share it widely, as a filmmaker.

The story became the backdrop of her 2020 Academy Award–nominated short, The Present. Her follow-up, The Teacher, marks her feature debut and reunites her with Jaffa-born actor Saleh Bakri (The Blue Caftan). The suspenseful drama draws on the true story of soldier Gilad Shalit, who was exchanged in 2011 for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. It follows a schoolteacher (Bakri), connected to a similar event, as he navigates his commitment to political resistance following his son’s death, while also looking after two of his son’s fatherless friends and beginning a relationship with a volunteer worker (British actor Imogen Poots). The film is currently in post-production but has already been acquired by leading European distributor Goodfellas.

While Nabulsi addresses Palestine’s challenging present, Muayad Ala-yan’s A House in Jerusalem (pictured above), explores its haunted past. A personal response to his parents becoming refugees in 1948, the director and co-writer’s third feature addresses collective trauma through horror cinema. The story concerns a young British girl (Miley Locke) and her father (Johnny Harris) who move to his family’s villa in West Jerusalem following his wife’s death. The daughter encounters the ghost of a Palestinian girl (Sheherazade Makhoul Farrell) living there, compelling her to learn the mysteries embedded both in the home and the country. The film premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in February.