Eating My Heart

‘Paradise Now is a hard-hitting and provocative account of the final hours of two Palestinian men recruited to carry out a suicide mission inside Israel. It faithfully depicts the hopeless and undignified existence of life under occupation while retaining the Palestinian humour and charm that characterises the people’s resilience. It is from here that we follow the duty-bound Khaled and Said from their uneasy and darkly comic recruitment into their final hours. Abu-Assad develops his documentary traditions into more symbolic, controlled gestures that unfurl the arguments of reason and destiny within armed struggle against the unforgettable tension the director is revered for. When plans go awry and the two are separated, their convictions are tested as they are forced to choose between life, each other, and fulfilling their mission — a choice that ultimately reveals that paradise is a fallacy neither will find in life or in death.’ Hussain Currimbhoy, St.George Bank Brisbane International Film Festival

‘A man returns to his parents’ homeland — Palestine, today’s Israel — searching in the contours of lives and spaces interrupted and sundered, for a sense of place, and narrative. Weaving fragmentary glimpses of his past as a teenage prisoner, his voyage is less a quest for memories, than an attempt to reconquer the present, as a living past. Visually framed by the unfinished history hovering over his family house, The Roof is a work far removed from the spectacular strategies of journalists and other supposedly verite investigators, and brandishes neither political slogans nor a logic of victimisation. There is nothing anecdotal to be found here, but rather anecdote raised to the level of allegory, enabling the film to trace meditative paths and rhythms; to find in a knocked-down wall the echo of another, larger Wall. In what is as much a stylistic as political manifesto, Kamal Aljafari reveals not so much the meaning of an absent roof, but the architecture of identity, place, and present pasts.’ Jean-Pierre Rehm, Festival International du Documentaire de Marseille

In what is left of the city of Jaffa, a man about to lose his house contemplates his fate. Meanwhile two women remain tied to their homes. In a nearby cafe an old captain sits motionless the whole day through, while another man moves restlessly like a fish in an aquarium.

‘The emptying of Jaffa, a thriving urban and economic port city in pre-1948 Palestine is a story rarely told. Kamal Aljafari's film follows his family after they receive an order to evacuate their home in Ajami, Jaffa's once-wealthy sea-front neighbourhood. Their lives and those of the other residents are thrown into disarray because they don't have the means to fight back. Radically poetic, Port of Memory is a reflection on the absurdity of being at once absent and present, blending the mundane gestures of everyday life and collective memory. Travelling from the subjective to the objective, the film captures the essence of being Palestinian in Israel, as well as under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.’ Rasha Salti, Middle East International Film Festival

‘Talking Hebrew in the street, writing fiction and poetry in Hebrew, even gossiping in Hebrew were all unimaginable before the grand project of Zionism set out to revive the sacred language and turn it into Israel’s everyday language. What has happened to Hebrew in the process and what happens to the people for whom it became a mother tongue? What traces has the language of the sacred text left and how do they resonate in everyday life? In Nurit Aviv’s poetic documentary, Israeli writers and artists attempt to describe their relationship to the religious dimension of the Hebrew language. Poetry, politics, religion and secular life are all explored in the most intriguing way through well-crafted interviews that narrate one of Israel’s most fascinating and least explored undercurrents.’ UK Jewish Film Festival

Yael Bartana’s video A Declaration 2006 opens with a man rowing in the Mediterranean Sea. He anchors alongside Andromeda’s Rock in Jaffa Harbor, where he substitutes the Israeli flag planted on the rock with an olive tree. Seen within the context of Israeli–Palestinian relations, the man’s actions are a bold intervention into the territory staked by the flag. The olive tree’s symbolic resonance also imbues the gesture with sacred significance, representing not only a peace offering and a call for an end to conflict, but also a celebration of strength and the capacity for renewal.

‘Summer Camp shows the activities of "The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions" (ICAHD); their actions consist amongst others, of rebuilding Palestinian houses in the occupied territories. In the summer of 2006 Yael Bartana filmed a group of ICAHD volunteers consisting of Palestinians, Israeli and various other nationalities, assisted by Palestinian construction workers, who were trying to rebuild in the village of Anata (east of Jerusalem) the former house of Abu Ahmed Al Hadad at exactly the same location where it was demolished by the Israeli authorities at the end of 2005. Bartana uses the same stylistic devices as the Zionist propaganda films from the first half of the twentieth century. For Summer Camp, Bartana sought inspiration amongst others by Helmar Lerski's film Awodah (Palestine 1935), which just like other propaganda films from the time, portrays the realisation of the Zionist dream to found a nation-state under the motto "We came to Israel to build and to be built".’ Ambulante Gira de Documentales

‘In a now-infamous incident in 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 22-year-old peace activist from the Pacific Northwest, attempted to stop a bulldozer operated by the Israeli military from demolishing homes and other buildings in Gaza. Corrie was struck and killed in what some witnesses claimed was a deliberate action, but what an Israeli inquiry ruled was a tragic accident. Simone Bitton, a veteran documentary filmmaker who is a citizen of both France and Israel, has crafted a dispassionate but devastating essay investigating the circumstances of Rachel Corrie’s death — including astounding eyewitness testimony from activists, soldiers, army spokespersons and physicians, as well as insights from Corrie’s parents, mentors and diaries. In assembling a thorough and candid account of the event, using both visual and narrative evidence, Bitton’s quietly persistent questioning manages to accomplish what the inadequate legal proceedings and the overheated press coverage did not: an unflinching examination that refuses to exculpate or equivocate. But Bitton’s nonfiction essay is hardly a bloodless tract — in fact, even as it raises troubling questions about the Israeli military’s candour, it also manages to paint a complex portrait of a young, perhaps naive, idealist and the high price some pay in the name of committed activism.’ Peter L Stein, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

One night at a bar, an old friend tells director Ari about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. Every night, the same number of beasts. The two men conclude that there’s a connection to their Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon War of the early eighties. Ari is surprised that he can’t remember a thing anymore about that period of his life. Intrigued by this riddle, he decides to meet and interview old friends and comrades around the world. He needs to discover the truth about that time and about himself. As Ari delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, his memory begins to creep up in surreal images…

‘Amos Gitaï's new film is carefully composed and orchestrated, highly self-aware and sculpted from both collective and personal memories. In addition to being completely heartfelt and honest, it comes from the mind of a man who is not afraid to be critical. It hews to no positions and has no agenda, encapsulating the contradictions and complexities inherent to Israel and its history. Using Jeanne Moreau's voice as a kind of chorus – she recites texts and poems in voice-over – Gitaï creates a kaleidoscope of images and associations from the distant Jewish past and the immediate Israeli present. Among the first images we see are centuries-old battles between Romans and Hebrews for the town of Jerusalem. The point is clear: this is a land that has seen much bloodletting. We are then transported to the present at an Israeli army encampment, where Gitaï himself laments the “half truths and half lies” on television and the “endless war” that his son is now engaged in fighting. As Gitaï grapples with this new reality and worries about the safety of his son – “It's not easy being a father in Israel these days,” he says – the subversive punk-rock lyrics on the soundtrack underline his doubts about the current political situation. And as if in counterpoint to these ancient and modern wars, he introduces memories of his mother through letters, sounds and anecdotes, a mother who spent much of the sixties in London, learning English and attending plays. Carmel feels like a cinematic poem. Its sequences and incidents, though they are all carefully selected, are not designed to construct a linear narrative. It is as if order is not possible in the world he sees around him. Chaos is far more illuminating, be it in the glorious music of Gustav Mahler that bursts through the claustrophobic reality of people engaged in war or in an account of Gitaï's personal exploits as a soldier shot down in a helicopter during the Yom Kippur War. Gitaï has turned into a great chronicler of his country, and what he finds there these days is not a simple narrative.’ Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival

‘July 2006. A war breaks out in Lebanon. A new war, but not just one more war. A war that crushes the hopes of peace and the dynamism of our generation. We no longer know what to write, what stories to recount, what images to show. We ask ourselves: "What can cinema do?" That question, we decide to translate it into reality. We go to Beirut with an "icon", an actress who, to us, symbolises cinema, Catherine Deneuve. She will meet our preferred actor, Rabih Mroué. Together, they will drive through the regions devastated by the conflict. Through their presence, their meeting, we hope to find the beauty which our eyes no longer perceive. It is the beginning of an unpredictable, unexpected adventure…’ Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

‘During the occupation of Southern Lebanon in 1999, when no images of the detention camp of Khiam were available, six prisoners who had just been freed, talked about their detention, and the artwork they secretly created as an act of resistance and survival. In May 2000, the camp of Khiam was dismantled and turned into a museum. Then, during the war in July 2006, it was totally destroyed. Eight years later, the six prisoners recall the liberation and the destruction of the camp.’ Torino Film Festival

‘Through the accounts of the six freed detainees, the film tries to do a kind of experiment in narrating various ways of expressing images through speech that build up progressively through the principle of evocation. The six former detainees recall the camp and tell how they managed to survive and, even more importantly, to resist. Through their accounts, the concepts of time and space are put into question, as well as the necessity of creating art works.’ Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

‘Born and raised in Brooklyn, Soraya (spoken-word artist Suheir Hammad) travels to Palestine to retrieve her grandfather's savings, frozen in a Jaffa bank account after his 1948 exile. Struggling to feel at home in the land of her ancestors, she meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. When confronted with unwieldy official policies that deny her access to the fruit of her grandfather's life's work, she must take things into her own hands, even if it's illegal. Stubborn, passionate, and determined to reclaim what's theirs, she and Emad set out on a road trip for poetic justice across a lush Palestinian (now Israeli) landscape—after which there is no return. Annemarie Jacir's award-winning directorial debut represents a fresh, viscerally affecting, and definitive statement from second-generation Palestinian Americans. Rife with symbolism, director of photography Benoit Chamaillard's colour-saturated lensing of Palestinian landscapes and composer Kamran Rastegar's evocative score make palpable the yearning and frustration of a quest to reclaim what was stolen.’ Roya Rastegar, Tribeca Film Festival

‘Nights and Days uses notes written and filmed during summer 2006 to recount the experience of War in a personal way. The first part which resembles, yet is not a diary of war, alternates day-shots with night-shots and features a soundtrack expressing the idea of time passing, the awaiting, the interrogations and fears experienced in such unusual time. The second part is a journey to south Lebanon which has been devastated during that war. It alternates beautiful and peaceful landscapes with ruins and destruction with only music for sound, as not a word can express this devastation. Nights and Days questions the relation between image and sound and also reflects on the notions of beauty and horror as most of the images are of beautiful urban or natural landscape, where only a detail may reveals the presence of war and its violence.’ Lamia Joreige

‘Famed documentary filmmaker Mai Masri, a Palestinian living in Lebanon, shows us life on the ground during the 2006 Israeli invasion. Beirut is turned upside down in a torrent of Israeli shells and bombs as refugees from the south arrive. Masri focuses on the experience of a small group of individuals, including a relief worker, a theatre performer who organises workshops and performances with traumatised and displaced children, and a television journalist. Their activity is presented straightforwardly; the drama is in the situation and in the images themselves. Masri’s camera also captures a lasting legacy of the invasion: Lebanese praise for Hezbollah for having withstood the Israelis.’ Harvard Film Archive

‘By reflecting on the resolve that is needed to take one’s own life rather than falling into the hands of the enemy, Avi Mograbi draws parallels between the founding myths of the Israeli state Masada; Samson (who, blinded, exhorted his fellow Jews to “avenge but one of my two eyes”); the Holocaust; and the current plight of the Palestinians. Mograbi has been making smart, personal/political films of the highest order for more than 15 years, and Avenge But One of My Two Eyes has a sense of power rarely found in the documentary form. Mograbi puts himself “front and centre” in evolving events. The film begins with a telephone call to Mograbi from a Palestinian friend who is so despondent over the Israeli-Palestinian debacle that he can no longer see why life is worth living. Mograbi takes to the streets, arguing with army officers and fellow Israelis. Intercut with this is a tour of Masada, the historic site where, in 72 AD, 960 Jewish zealots killed themselves to evade becoming Roman slaves. The similarities to the plight of the Palestinian people are obvious for Mograbi; his trenchant observations, question intellect, and refusal to give up reasons for hope. If there are more people like him (and there are) on both sides of the divide, peace can eventually be achieved.’ Vancouver International Film Festival

‘One of Israel’s most celebrated non-fiction filmmakers, Avi Mograbi specialises in urgent, impassioned diagnoses on the state of the nation, and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. Mograbi is known for prominently inserting himself into his films as a director and concerned citizen struggling to understand or meaningfully synthesise all that he’s witnessing and filming. Another Mograbi trademark is the shocking eruption of humour in the midst of reflecting on the region’s injustices. Mograbi’s latest film, Z32, returns to a major theme of his previous work and especially Avenge but One of My Two Eyes 2005: an investigation of the way the military dehumanises both soldiers and “the enemy” and, by extension, Israeli society as a whole. Z32 is built around a confession — a young man’s account of his participation in the revenge killing of two Palestinian police officers by the Israeli army in the occupied territories. Around the soldier’s account Mograbi interweaves a couple’s extended and often agonising discussion of their relationship, punctuated by Mograbi himself characteristically addressing the camera. Adding further layers of complexity are the use of a digital “mask,” both to disguise the young soldier’s identity and foreground the politics of the camera as witness, and Mograbi’s radical decision to perform his own musings as Brechtian songs, set to Weill-ian music. The radical elements of Mograbi’s project combine to raise painful and unsettling questions about responsibility, forgiveness and the shape of cinematic truth.’ Harvard Film Archive

WORLD PREMIERE

[What’s Going On?] allows the Lebanese public to discover its land from a different perspective. The audience will travel through culture, love and writing and seize the best of Lebanese roots. With the main character Nasri, the audience will experience a very particular romantic pursuit. This time, the beloved is none other than Beirut itself, the role of which is played by Khouloud Yassine. Cinemaiyat“The film is not only about the beauty of Beirut. It’s about the truth of Beirut, which is sometimes beautiful, sometimes not. It’s not trying to portray Beirut as an amazing, wonderful city. It’s not. It’s trying to get into the ribs, inside the flesh, and trying to portray the city from inside. Sometimes it’s ferocious.” Joumana Haddad, (Scriptwriter, ‘What’s Going On’

‘Soup over Bethlehem depicts an ordinary Palestinian family, Larissa Sansour’s own, around a dinner table on a rooftop overlooking the West Bank city of Bethlehem. What starts as a culinary discussion about the national dish mloukhieh being served from a soup bowl soon evolves into a personal and engaging conversation about politics – thereby emphasising the symbiosis of food and politics so indicative of the Palestinian experience. Rather than offering a portrait of a national identity as an invitation to renegotiate stereotypes, Soup over Bethlehem presents a stereotype already renegotiated. The mloukhieh in the soup bowl represents the shared national heritage – a single constant amid nothing but fluctuation. And the meal itself becomes a gastronomic anchoring of a Palestinian identity in eternal flux.’ Palestinian Film Foundation

‘Happy Days exposes everyday Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. The video is a collage of footage shot on location in the occupied territories accompanied by the theme music from the seventies sitcom “Happy Days”. The piece provides imagery different from that of news footage. The contrasting music underlines the general public’s apathy when confronted with world conflict. The idea is to subjugate international politics to a format normally associated with entertainment and thereby call attention to the blurry boundary between the two.’ Palestine Film Foundation

‘In Land Confiscation Order 06/24/T, Larissa Sansour explores the notion of territory as constitutive of not only national, but also personal identity. The work is a requiem for a small piece of land and a house made of stone. It in turn becomes a eulogy for the dream of viable statehood and exposes Palestinian identity as a block that not only political and cultural, but also geographical factors are chopping away at on a daily basis. And as such, the video investigates the idea of the perception of the self as shaped by restrictions imposed by the other. Though regularly appearing in her own videos, in Land Confiscation Order 06/24/T Sansour has chosen to step aside and tell the story of the confiscation of her own family’s land through her sister and brother. By draping the house entirely in a black cloth, the two perform a ritual not only serving as an acknowledgment of material and geographical loss, but also as a commemorative gesture to a national identity dismantled by military occupation and international politics.’ Elisabeth A Sackler Centre for Feminist Art

‘A Space Exodus quirkily sets up an adapted stretch of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 in a Middle Eastern political context. The recognisable music score of the science fiction film is changed to arabesque chords matching the surreal visuals of Sansour’s film. The film follows the director herself on a phantasmagoric journey through the universe echoing Kubrick’s thematic concerns for human evolution, progress and technology. Sansour, however, posits the idea of a first Palestinian on the Moon: “A small step for a Palestinian, a giant leap for mankind”. Palestine Film Foundation

‘In the summer of 2002, Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi travelled together from the south to the north of their country of birth, traced their trajectory on a map and called it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in Resolution 181, which was adopted by the United Nations on November 29th 1947 to partition Palestine into two states. As they travel along this route, they meet women and men, Israeli and Palestinian, young and old, civilians and soldiers, filming them in their everyday lives. Each of these characters has their own way of evoking the frontiers that separate them from their neighbours: concrete, barbed-wire, cynicism, humour, indifference, suspicion, aggression... Frontiers have been built on the hills and in the plains, on mountains and in valleys but above all inside the minds and souls of these two peoples and in the collective unconscious of both societies. Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel takes us on a disorientating journey across this tiny territory with vast ramifications.’ Momento!

‘[Divine Intervention] is perhaps the funniest film ever shot in a war zone. But, as you would expect from any film shot on location in the West Bank and in Israel, Divine Intervention is not just funny: it’s also enraged, absurd, unsettling, morose, sad, silly, serious and hopeful. This is a singular view of Palestinian communities fraying at the edges – conveyed through a succession of almost-silent vignettes reminiscent of Jacques Tati, Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett. Most of the film’s narrative revolves around ES, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem (played to deadpan perfection by the dour-faced director Elia Suleiman) whose father is dying, and whose Palestinian girlfriend lives across the border in Ramallah; her movements are restricted, so their furtive encounters have to take place in a deserted parking lot next to an Israeli military checkpoint. Driven around the bend by the folly and despair of his life, ES explodes into fantasy.’ Vancouver International Film Festival

‘Imagine a film chronicling the lives and hardships of Palestinians who were branded “Israeli-Arabs,” living as a minority in their own homeland. Now imagine it as a comedy. This contradiction, starring, written and directed by Elia Suleiman, is a wonderful fusion of the political and personal, the historical and the hysterical. Spanning from 1948 until recent times, The Time That Remains recreates the lives of Suleiman's family and community with precise, deadpan wit. The film is inspired by his father's diaries and his mother's letters to family who were forced to leave the country. Suleiman combines sometimes absurd vignettes and brightly coloured mise en scène with the framing of a Jacques Tati film, interspersing touching moments of familial intimacy with tense scenes of abuse at the hands of Israelis. The Time That Remains tells the story of a family through the lens of a satirical biographer, observing his family's life through shadow-rimmed eyes. During this time, we see Suleiman's father from his beginnings as a resistance fighter and firebrand gun-maker, watching as he gradually ages into the old patriarch sitting outside the local café, consuming countless cigarettes and cups of coffee as he reminisces with his friends. “Israeli-Arabs” is a political term for those Palestinians who are both insiders and outsiders, present and absent — conditions felt by Suleiman, his family and other Palestinians who chose to remain on their lands. His own perspective is both deeply local and fully international, both rigorous and comic. Under the masterful direction of an exceptionally thoughtful filmmaker, The Time That Remains deals with political history without ever becoming mired in politics. Rather, we are presented with a beautifully conceived series of wry sketches that follow one ordinary family in extraordinary times.’ Cameron Bailey, Toronto International Film Festival

‘Three staged testimonies shed light on the experiences of Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli detention centres during the occupation of South Lebanon. Notions such as heroism and suffering are explored amid a dissection of the codes of representation and ideological indoctrination during times on conflict in this tribute to Jean-Luc Godard’s Ici et ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere) 1976.’ Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Beirut Art Centre

‘In this study of sexuality among gay men in Lebanon, one couple and three characters discuss relationships, passions, commitments and failures in a society where homosexuality remains punishable by law. The video uses light to create a white veil over the subjects, which prevents viewers from seeing or identifying their faces. By obstructing the image, the work locates itself in a specific social context, at a time and place where certain rights are not granted.’ Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Beirut Art Centre

‘This is a recording of a silent moment, in which two men prepare themselves for a military action. While the older one leaves at the end, weapon to his shoulder, the younger one decides to stay. Akram Zaatari works with a former member of the Lebanese Resistance, Mohammad Abu Hammane, who was featured 11 years ago in his video All is Well on the Border 1997. His reappearance in this work is a transposition in time that evokes the awakening of an older resistant, now revisiting his military gear.’ Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage