{"id":308805,"date":"2025-11-26T20:27:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T20:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/308805\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T20:27:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T20:27:06","slug":"palestine-36-review-palestines-stirring-oscar-submission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/308805\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Palestine 36\u2019 Review: Palestine’s Stirring Oscar Submission"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWriter-director Annemarie Jacir<\/a> takes on her largest-scale production to date with Palestine<\/a> 36, a panoramic drama that interweaves period re-creations with evocative archival footage and revolves among characters both fictional and historical. The multi-viewpoint story unfolds during a pivotal moment for the Palestinian people, the beginning of a three-year uprising against the British Empire\u2019s increasingly unjust rule and the impact of settlers fleeing anti-Jewish persecution in Europe. This is a story of national identity and resistance with contemporary resonance, but it\u2019s also a classic genre movie, its historical tapestry populated by a strong ensemble of screen stars as well as impressive newcomers.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike any historical drama, it has a point of view and doesn\u2019t explore every facet of the events it depicts. But neither does it pretend to do so. And even as Jacir maintains an affecting Palestinian perspective, her movie offers far more facets and nuances than, say, Exodus, Hollywood\u2019s star-studded paean to Zionism; in that 1960 release, Arab Palestinians are mostly offscreen impediments to the creation of a Jewish state. Palestine 36, in its glimpses of the European settlers\u2019 children, however brief, holds them in a kind of embrace and acknowledges their essential innocence in a desperately ill-conceived plan. (A dozen years after the events of Jacir\u2019s film, the village at its center would be razed during the Nakba \u2014 destroyed by Haganah troops, the heroes of Exodus.)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPalestine 36\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tVivid and stirring.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, Nov. 28
Cast: Hiam Abbas, Kamel El Basha, Yasmine Al Massri, Jalal Altawil, Robert Aramayo, Saleh Bakri, Yafa Bakri, Karim Daoud Anaya, Wardi Eilabouni, Ward Helou, Billy Howle, Dhafer L\u2019Abidine, Liam Cunningham, Jeremy Irons
Director-screenwriter: Annemarie Jacir
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 59 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tJacir\u2019s feature began production in Palestine in early 2023, relocated to Jordan after the conflict between Hamas and Israel exploded, and returned to Palestine to wrap its shoot, becoming the only feature filmed in Palestine during the first two years of the ongoing crisis. In all its locations, the natural world is a potent element, the land\u2019s beauty and its hiding places well captured; the fine camerawork is credited to three DPs, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Louvart, Sarah Blum and Tim Fleming. Restored and colorized archival footage of Palestine, well integrated into the story by editor Tania Redding, enriches the movie\u2019s sense of place. And as the story moves between age-old farm communities and bustling, elegant Jerusalem, production designer Nael Kanj and costume designer Hamada Atallah create a vibrant world that\u2019s alive with period detail.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the heart of the narrative, which begins in early 1936, is the village of Al Basma (sometimes called Al Bassa), whose farmers find themselves under siege. Jewish settlers arriving from Europe are confiscating more and more of their land, enabled and protected by the British administrators of the region. Jacir focuses on a handful of villagers and a few of the English. Their interactions are sometimes civil, occasionally friendly, and usually contentious, the British police, military and functionaries talking down to the locals when they aren\u2019t outright brutalizing them.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfra (Wardi Eilabouni), a spirited girl of about 12, lives in the village with her widowed mother, Rabab (Yafa Bakri), and resilient, toughened grandparents (Succession\u2019s Hiam Abbass<\/a> and Kamel El Basha). Afra\u2019s friend Kareem (Ward Helou), an enterprising cobbler, is learning lessons from his even-tempered father, a priest (Jalal Altawil), in how to endure the colonizers\u2019 abuse.<\/p>\n

\n\tDreaming of wider horizons, Afra is eager for news of Jerusalem, where her twentysomething neighbor Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya) travels by train for his job as an assistant to the well-to-do Amir (Dhafer L\u2019Abidine) and his wife, Khuloud (Yasmine Al Massri). She\u2019s a modern woman who sometimes likes to wear Amir\u2019s fez and trousers in the privacy of their mansion. For her work as a journalist, writing columns supporting the growing revolt against the British Mandate, she must use a male pseudonym if she expects to be read.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the Port of Jaffa, Khalid (Saleh Bakri, a leading Palestinian screen star whose credits include The Teacher<\/a> as well as Jacir\u2019s Wajib<\/a> and When I Saw You<\/a>) isn\u2019t ready to join the rebellion \u2014 until he\u2019s beaten for asking for the overtime pay he\u2019s earned. Soon he\u2019s not merely participating in the general strike that\u2019s been called but riding horseback across the territory as one of the rebels\u2019 leaders.<\/p>\n

\n\tJacir\u2019s story of resistance is also one of capital and class, embodied most clearly in farmer\u2019s son Yusuf, who moves between two worlds and faces a dilemma of growing urgency, his innocence and awakening eloquently expressed in Anaya\u2019s performance. It\u2019s one thing when Yusuf is hectored by a British soldier demanding his ID; it\u2019s another when his father is killed by settlers and his younger brother arrested for no particular reason. He\u2019s awash in condescension whether he\u2019s serving drinks to the guests at his boss\u2019 soirees or sitting in on Amir\u2019s Muslim Association meetings, where wealthy Palestinian landowners shrug over the farmers\u2019 plight and assert that the Zionists are good for business.<\/p>\n

\n\tKhuloud, too, from her higher social tier, moves between worlds. One of her key sources of information is Thomas Hopkins (Billy Howle), who\u2019s sympathetic to the Palestinians\u2019 plight but continues to do the Empire\u2019s bidding in his role as private secretary to High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope (Jeremy Irons<\/a>). Compelled by a sense of justice, Khuloud, invested with fierceness and humor by Al Massri, finds herself more and more on the outside of her husband\u2019s social and business circles.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the exception of Howle\u2019s fictional Thomas, the Brits, based on real-life figures, are represented here with an assortment of pomp, cluelessness, arrogance and cruelty, all of it smartly played and never cartoonish. Whether he\u2019s inaugurating the Palestine Broadcasting Service beneath flapping Union Jacks or facing the women who descend on his office to demand an end to unjust policies, Irons\u2019 Wauchope is a self-satisfied spouter of windy bureaucratese. At one point in his bloviating, Khuloud notes with a smirk that \u201cthis is the part where they educate and elevate us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sadistic military officer Captain Wingate (Robert Aramayo<\/a>, of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) is the movie\u2019s most obviously hissable character, a small-minded type who feels justified in everything he does. When, in a crisply scripted and underplayed scene, he spouts a certain biblical prophecy as justification for the Zionist project in Palestine (rhetoric still heard today), Thomas calmly calls into question the supposed evidence for this theory.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a bit of especially delicious irony, Liam Cunningham<\/a> \u2014 a vocal supporter of Palestinian independence and a participant in one of the flotillas trying to deliver aid to Gazans blockaded by Israel<\/a> \u2014 plays Charles Tegart, who has the dubious distinction of being an expert adviser on counterinsurgency. Fresh off Britain\u2019s colonial project in India, he\u2019s a guy with a pointer and ridiculous ideas. The torrent of F-bombs unleashed by Thomas in response to those ideas is a fitting expression of newfound certainty for a long-conflicted employee, and a satisfying crescendo to Howle\u2019s terrific performance.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier in the movie, one of the village elders poses a question of piercing simplicity to Thomas: \u201cIs it the right of the English, as occupying power, to distribute the land as they like?\u201d Such potent clarity courses beneath the action of Palestine 36, sometimes rising to the surface in straightforward dialogue as characters grapple with half-baked rationalizations and arbitrary policies. When Afra asks her mother why the settlers, busy putting up fences and watchtowers, have come to their land, Rabab, down-to-earth and luminous in Yafa Bakri\u2019s portrayal, puts it plainly: \u201cTheir countries don\u2019t want them.\u201d As Palestine 36 dramatizes so well, the fight for justice is no more complicated than the schism between heartlessness and compassion, no less urgent than the interfused fires of anguish and hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer-director Annemarie Jacir takes on her largest-scale production to date with Palestine 36, a panoramic drama that interweaves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[114116,49,48,75,138025,42161,138026,337,23156,138027],"class_list":{"0":"post-308805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-afi-fest","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-hiam-abbass","13":"tag-jeremy-irons","14":"tag-liam-cunningham","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-palestine","17":"tag-robert-aramayo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}