Wajib (2017)
Country: OPT/FR/COL/GER/UAE/QAT/NOR
Technical: col 96m
Director: Annemarie Jacir
Cast: Mohammad Bakri, Saleh Bakri
Synopsis:
A Palestinian émigré architect returns to his home town, Nazareth, to help his father with plans for his sister's wedding, which is taking place atypically in winter to accommodate their estranged mother, resident in the United States. Over the course of one day father and son deliver invitations by hand, according to custom, clashing over the guest list, wedding arrangements, politics, customs, and the scars of the past, until it seems they will never accomplish their task.
Review:
Jacir's excellent comedy drama unpicks the tensions inherent in being an Arab citizen of Israel, without resorting to commonplaces such as terrorism or open confrontation. It hooks us from the start with its pair of characters, both of whom have obvious sympathetic qualities alongside their 'blind spots'. Along the way humorous, even farcical, elements are handled with a deftness that meanwhile anchors the film within conventional realist cinema. The film closes, like Stanley Tucci's Big Night (1996), with a kind of unspoken truce as two people bonded by blood sit and share a moment of stillness. Which says more about the Palestinian question than any amount of stridently partisan grandiloquence.
Country: OPT/FR/COL/GER/UAE/QAT/NOR
Technical: col 96m
Director: Annemarie Jacir
Cast: Mohammad Bakri, Saleh Bakri
Synopsis:
A Palestinian émigré architect returns to his home town, Nazareth, to help his father with plans for his sister's wedding, which is taking place atypically in winter to accommodate their estranged mother, resident in the United States. Over the course of one day father and son deliver invitations by hand, according to custom, clashing over the guest list, wedding arrangements, politics, customs, and the scars of the past, until it seems they will never accomplish their task.
Review:
Jacir's excellent comedy drama unpicks the tensions inherent in being an Arab citizen of Israel, without resorting to commonplaces such as terrorism or open confrontation. It hooks us from the start with its pair of characters, both of whom have obvious sympathetic qualities alongside their 'blind spots'. Along the way humorous, even farcical, elements are handled with a deftness that meanwhile anchors the film within conventional realist cinema. The film closes, like Stanley Tucci's Big Night (1996), with a kind of unspoken truce as two people bonded by blood sit and share a moment of stillness. Which says more about the Palestinian question than any amount of stridently partisan grandiloquence.
Country: OPT/FR/COL/GER/UAE/QAT/NOR
Technical: col 96m
Director: Annemarie Jacir
Cast: Mohammad Bakri, Saleh Bakri
Synopsis:
A Palestinian émigré architect returns to his home town, Nazareth, to help his father with plans for his sister's wedding, which is taking place atypically in winter to accommodate their estranged mother, resident in the United States. Over the course of one day father and son deliver invitations by hand, according to custom, clashing over the guest list, wedding arrangements, politics, customs, and the scars of the past, until it seems they will never accomplish their task.
Review:
Jacir's excellent comedy drama unpicks the tensions inherent in being an Arab citizen of Israel, without resorting to commonplaces such as terrorism or open confrontation. It hooks us from the start with its pair of characters, both of whom have obvious sympathetic qualities alongside their 'blind spots'. Along the way humorous, even farcical, elements are handled with a deftness that meanwhile anchors the film within conventional realist cinema. The film closes, like Stanley Tucci's Big Night (1996), with a kind of unspoken truce as two people bonded by blood sit and share a moment of stillness. Which says more about the Palestinian question than any amount of stridently partisan grandiloquence.