Spotlight on films from Palestine

A still from The Teacher (2023) by Palestinian-origin director Farah Nabulsi. The film, shot in West Bank, is part of the Window on Palestine section of El Gouna Film Festival.

In her first feature film shot in the West Bank of Palestine, The Present, Farah Nabulsi's protagonist balances his life-threatening political resistance with a fledgling romantic relationship. It was a tightrope walk for Nabulsi, too, offsetting logistical toils in an occupied territory against her emotional turbulence.

"You’re making a film that’s set in a harsh reality, while shooting in that reality in real time, with that reality unfolding around you," says the London-based director of The Present (2020) and The Teacher (2023) - also filmed in Palestine's West Bank.

"When shooting in the West Bank of Palestine, you also have an ongoing settler colonization and military occupation taking place in real time around you to contend with, like random flying checkpoints being set up by the Israeli military or roads being outright closed," says Nabulsi, whose 2020 short film The Present was nominated for an Oscar. However, she adds, the biggest challenge was "the mental and emotional one".

Part of a special focus on Palestinian cinema at the El Gouna Film Festival which opened on December 14, The Teacher by Palestinian-origin filmmaker Nabulsi reflects the challenges of independent cinema. It also represents the response of artists to life in times of conflicts.

The Teacher, which had its world premiere at the Toronto film festival two months ago, is joined by documentaries and features like Ambulance, Bye Bye Tiberias, Drawing for Better Dreams and Not Just Your Picture: The Story of the Kilani Family in a 10-film Window on Palestine programme at the El Gouna festival.

The sixth edition of the El Gouna festival, taking place in the Red Sea state, about 400km from Egypt's Rafah border crossing with Gaza - ground zero of the Israel-Hamas war - is presented as 'cinema for humanity'. The festival had to be postponed from its original October schedule due to the humanitarian crisis next door.

Made in Palestine in 2023

Organised in collaboration with the Gaza-based Palestine Film Institute, the focus on Palestine, described as 'a window into the collective experiences, challenges, and triumphs that shape the region', has two films made this year - Nabulsi's The Teacher and fellow-Palestinian-origin director Lina Soualem's powerful documentary, Bye Bye Tiberias, on the bonds and choices of Palestinian women - along with celebrated Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah's nearly 5-hour-long epic, Babel el Shams (The Gate of the Sun) made in 2004 about the roots of the Palestinian issue.

A still from Bye Bye Tiberias (2023) by Palestinian-origin director Lina Soualem.

The personal journey of four generations of Palestinian women, including her mother who left her Palestinian village for Europe 30 years ago to follow her dream of becoming an actor, Bye Bye Tiberias director Soualem explores the continuing bond between members of families living within and outside their native land.

"It’s crucial for me to try to give back complexity to those who are often deprived of it in terms of representation in cinema," says Soualem, the Paris-born filmmaker of Palestinian and Algerian parents, about her focus on women in the 82-minute documentary, which premiered in Venice Days this year.

Window on Gaza

Ambulance, a documentary shot by Palestinian director Mohamed Jabaly on the 2014 war in Gaza during which he was an ambulance crew member, portrays the power of human connection amid pain and suffering. Jabaly, a former Gaza resident stranded in Norway on a visit in 2014 after the Israeli military operation forced closure of the Gaza border, won Best Director at the prestigious International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) award in November this year for Al Haya Helwa (Life is Beautiful), a work based on his experience in exile.

Ambulance by Gaza-born director Mohamed Jabaly, winner of the IDFA Best Director award this year for Life is Beautiful, was shot during the 2014 Israeli military operation in Gaza.

Set partly in a refugee camp in Rafah on the Egypt-Gaza border, To My Father (2008) by Gaza-born director Abdelsalam Shehadeh, also part of Window on Palestine, traces half-a-century of Palestinian and Arab history through the works of studio photographers of the second half of last century.

Not Just Your Picture: The Story of the Kilani Family by Jerusalem-born Dror Dayan and Paris-born Anne Paq, both longtime observers of the situation in Palestine, tells the real-life story of two young German-Palestinian siblings seeking justice for the killing of their father in an Israeli air strike on Gaza in 2014.

"We are well aware of the way the issue of Palestine is perceived in the West. It is precisely this perception that we aim to challenge with the film, by introducing two young people, who are European as well as unapologetically Palestinian and demand to be recognized as both. We hope to bring the injustices of the situation in Palestine to the doorstep of viewers around the world," say the directors, both involved in the production of the award-winning web documentary on life in the Gaza city, Obliterated Families (2016).

Film festival

First held in 2017, the El Gouna Film Festival has grown to become a major event for Arab filmmakers in the Middle East and North America (MENA) region along with the Cairo film festival, the oldest in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia's Red Sea film festival and the Marrakesh festival in Morocco.

Whispers of Fire & Water by Lubdhak Chatterjee is the only Indian film competing for the El Gouna Golden Star, the top prize at the festival, which also has Anurag Kashyap's Kennedy, which premiered in Cannes this year, in the out-of-competition section. Goodbye Julia, Sudan's Oscar entry this year, The Shanabs by Egyptian director Ayten Amin and the Kurdish language film Transient Happiness by Iraqi director Sina Muhammed are among the competition entries. Anup Singh, the director of Irrfan Khan-starring Qissa and The Song of Scorpions, is a member of the competition jury this year.