Cleverly and artistically shot, this film traces the history of the director’s Palestinian family from 1948 through to the present day. The film opens in 1948 outside a cafe with scenes of Palestinian and other Arab militia men fighting the Jews that were taking over Palestine. Although it was clearly a terrible situation, the film managed to portray a true beauty to the surroundings of the time. As the film progressed into the 1970’s and the family were living under an oppressive occupation, the same beauty in the landscape and surroundings remained despite all the horrors and annoyances, big and small that they experienced.
The director managed to portray the huge difficulties that ordinary people had to endure in a humorous way without diminishing the gravity and bleak outlook for the Palestinians. As the story continued into the 1980’s, the feel of Nazareth where the family lived changed and became decidedly unattractive and even ugly at times. This was partly on a personal level as the director’s parents became increasingly old and infirm. This was skilfully complemented by showing unappealing scenery in places where there was elegance and charm previously. The director used clever techniques like cutting scenes from different periods and a repetition of the same scene though different periods often in humorous way. All in all this made for a touching and extremely enjoyable film!
RB
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