“We are all, rich and poor, united in our struggle for independence and freedom”. One can always reread history and certify that it tells the truth from an angle that best matches one’s convictions, yet there are nevertheless some unavoidable and relatively undeniable facts and temporal points of reference with heavy short and long term consequences. It is one of those crucial periods that Annemarie Jacir (already appreciated for, among others, Salt of This Sea [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] and Wajib [+leggi anche:
recensione
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scheda film]) decided to bring back to the surface of electric contemporary opinions with Palestine 36, unveiled as a Gala screening at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival. A dive into the past that the Palestinian filmmaker operates with great, quasi-documentary precision, all while romanticising it in order to make it accessible to the widest possible audience and without obscuring at all her political commitment (which absolutely does not alter the fascinating side of the whole).

Although the film begins in Spring 1936 in a Palestine administered by the Brits since the end of the First World War and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, it is the 1917 Balfour declaration advocating “a national home for the Jewish people” that underpins all the events that will precipitate in Jerusalem and in the small village of Al Basma, the two epicentres of the story written by the director. For the balance is precarious and tension rises dangerously between the Arab inhabitants and the increasingly numerous Jewish colonisers, with land property and manual labour as immediate issues, and a British occupier playing a troubled game fed by promises (the Peel commission should find equitable solutions…) and a growing police and military firmness in the face of outbursts. General strike, rebellion, counter-insurrection: it’s an escalation and the prospect of a partition of the territory sets fire to the powder keg…

Fluidly moving between multiple characters, from the privileged world of journalist Khulood (Yasmine Al Massri) and her husband Amir (Dhafer L'Abidine), to the countryside with the family of young Afra (Wardi Eilabouni), which notably includes her mother Rabab (Yafa Bakri) and her grand-mother (Hiam Abbass), but also the little shoeshine boy Kareem (Ward Helou), as well as rebels Khalid (Saleh Bakri) and Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya) who connect all these worlds, all without forgetting the British representatives (Jeremy Irons, Billy Howle, Robert Aramayo), Annemarie Jacir weaves a captivating and very instructive fresco. Naturally passionate, committed (there is no reverse shot on the Jewish point of view), resistant and rather feminist, the film mixes together the right doses of melodrama and historical reenactment in order to retrace a burning historical crossroads whose flames have sadly not stopped growing for almost 90 years. But to imagine a future, it is always best to know in what fire the past has been forged.

Palestine 36 was produced by Philistine Films (Palestine) with Autonomous (United Kingdom), Corniche Media (United Kingdom), MK Productions (France) and Snowglobe (Denmark). French outfits mk2 and Lucky Number are handling international sales.