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Major international film festivals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have warmed up to a movie that has chillingly captured a violent occupation and an unsettling hostage situation on the big screen only a month before the Israel-Hamas war began.
Shot in the West Bank of Palestine last year, ‘The Teacher’ had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, before Hamas invaded Israel on October 7 and took hundreds of hostages. Over 19,000 people have been killed in the Israeli attack on Gaza since then and 1,200 people were killed in Hamas incursion into Israel.
Directed by Palestinian-British director Farah Nabulsi, the film tells the story of Israeli occupation and settler colonisation of the West Bank inspired by several real-life incidents. The film also has a hostage drama about a fictional Israeli soldier, the son of an American-Jewish couple, in the custody of Palestinian resistance.
As the Israel-Hamas war rages on, The Teacher has returned to the film festival circuit, winning audiences and awards, especially in the MENA region. At the just-concluded Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the film won the Jury Prize and the Best Actor award for the celebrated Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri for his lead role as an English teacher sharing loss and grief with one of his students.
Following its win in Saudi Arabia, The Teacher was bestowed the opening film status at the Bosphorus Film Festival in Istanbul, Turkey, held from December 8-16. It was also the opening film of a Window on Palestine special section at the ongoing El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza.
“It just happens that some of the elements of the story I have written are playing out in real-time right now,” Nabulsi told Hindustan Times after the film’s screening at El Gouna festival, which was postponed to December from its original October schedule because of the Israel-Hamas war. “We shot the film in the West Bank last year.”
Nabulsi, who would cycle around London’s Hyde Park as a 15-year-old supporting Palestinian charities, was an investment banker in the world’s commercial capital before a visit to her roots in Palestine caused a shift in career.
“I went to Palestine many times as a child, but ten years ago I went there for the first time as an adult. I saw with my own eyes the extent of injustice, discrimination and oppression taking place,” she says.
“My parents are Palestinians. They never shied away from their children knowing our origins, heritage and identity. I was always kept aware that a gross injustice had been done and there was a military occupation and a settler colonial enterprise that had been taking place in our historical land. But the difference was I wasn’t compelled to take further action in my life until I visited Palestine.”
“A few years ago, I wanted to express myself creatively and tell these human stories. I have always loved cinema and theatre. I decided to throw caution to the wind,” recalls Nebulsi, who never attended a film school. “(American director) Stanley Kubrick said the best education in film is to make one. I thought, okay.”
“The reason I became a filmmaker is if I can’t compel millions of people to fly to Palestine, actually millions of people won’t be allowed to go to Palestine, let me bring Palestine to them. Cinema is one of the mostpowerful means of meaningful human communication the world has ever known. So if I can bring Palestine to people in a dark room for two hours where they really connect and understand, that is an incredible thing.”
While she wrote and produced three short films, including Today They Took My Son, which received a screening at the United Nations in 2017, her directorial venture, The Present, a short film made in West Bank about a father and daughter negotiating Israeli checkpoints to carry a gift to her mother, was a turning point. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Live Action Short and won the BAFTA award for Best Short Film in 2021.
“The Teacher is my debut feature film. Many people who knew me as a teenager say I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I have always believed what the Italian artist Davide dormino said — True art always has a role and responsibility to take a stance.”
“It just takes a few people of courage to lead the way and show others to be courageous. If you lose your job for calling an end to the occupation, a massacre of people, an entire population prevented from receiving food and medical aid, then you are working with the wrong people. If you are afraid that you will lose followers, then those are the wrong followers.”
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