back in 1996! when i was first living in london and voraciously exploring all contemporary middle eastern culture leads i bought tickets to a palestinian film by a then unknown elia suleiman. chronicle of a disappearance completely floored me. i really was not expecting such a deep work from the non-persian middle east (all i had to go on after all was melodramatic egyptian cinema!). it is still my favorite middle eastern film i think.
palestinian film has continued to surprise me. a few years ago it was paradise now, a movie i only attended because it was the diff opening gala screening. again, deep and powerful and certainly one of the best regional films i have seen.
last week it was laila’s birthday. i was deliberating between it and la soledad (i think) playing at the same time before choosing the more charming downtown cinema location over sanitized city stars.
it was london 1996 all over again. for some reason i keep going into these films with deflated expectations. rashid masharawi has made another restrained, deep, poignant contemporary palestinian masterpiece. mohamed bakri plays abu laila (laila’s father) an out of work judge who drives a taxi to pay the bills. the film takes place over the course of laila’s birthday starting off with laila being driven to work by her old man in the taxi and ending later that evening back at home with cake and presents. as they prepare the birthday cake his wife asks him how his day was. ‘oh, just the usual’ he says.
his day has in fact been one of constant humiliation, ego-deflating, dignity-stripping existence that would resonate with anyone living in the non-gulf middle east today. masharawi joins together the pieces of a mad anything but usual adventure that takes in israeli missiles, inept politicians, intra-palestinian confilct, economic stagnation, cloaked in a so thick you can taste it tension (present in all the palestinian films i discuss here) with assured restraint. in his final touch of genius he adriotly puts the despair, desperations, frustrations, and impossibilities of being good and straight in a corrupt world away, magnificently ending it all on a movingly hopeful note.
palestinian film continues to impress.
the end. (of my cairo film festival series).