E.lia Suleiman, director and main protagpnist, lays bare his past and his identiy as an 'Israeli-Arab' who grew up in the occupied territories of the West Bank. Filmed mostly in Ramallah, well known as a hotspot of the first Intifada of the late 1980s and presently seat of the Palestinian National Authority, this is Suleiman's first Israeli, rather than Palestinian, Cannes entry and while it does snot really labour a cause it serves as a powerful memento of the fate of Arab Christians.
We see 50 years of Palestinian history through the lense of a family, from the surrender of the protagonist's grandfather, in his role of major, to the Isreali army, via his father's time in the resistance, to his own youth until he is expelled and has to leave.
He visits years later, his parents having passed on, to visit his ailing aunt, seemingly the one strong tie that binds him to his past, where he is from, and in a way, who he is. Two friends still recognise him, and the three of them spending time together in a street cafe, observing the ever recurring pattern of life locked away in the eternal melancholy of what has been lost, is perhaps one of the most memorable images captured by Suleiman.
The film begins, and ends, with absurdly cast scenes from the protagonist's last visit that he pays to his aunt as she lies dying. Present-day Palestine as a horror cabinet of a community decendet into farce. How else to portray the lived contradictions of the Palestinian people, the unbearable fate of the boy who grew up to be man through leaving behind what made him in order to break free.
We see 50 years of Palestinian history through the lense of a family, from the surrender of the protagonist's grandfather, in his role of major, to the Isreali army, via his father's time in the resistance, to his own youth until he is expelled and has to leave.
He visits years later, his parents having passed on, to visit his ailing aunt, seemingly the one strong tie that binds him to his past, where he is from, and in a way, who he is. Two friends still recognise him, and the three of them spending time together in a street cafe, observing the ever recurring pattern of life locked away in the eternal melancholy of what has been lost, is perhaps one of the most memorable images captured by Suleiman.
The film begins, and ends, with absurdly cast scenes from the protagonist's last visit that he pays to his aunt as she lies dying. Present-day Palestine as a horror cabinet of a community decendet into farce. How else to portray the lived contradictions of the Palestinian people, the unbearable fate of the boy who grew up to be man through leaving behind what made him in order to break free.