This screening is part of: MY HOMELAND IS NOT A SUITCASE: ANNEMARIE JACIR, EMILY JACIR, AND DAR JACIR FOR ART AND RESEARCH

Film Notes

PART 1: ANNEMARIE JACIR
Over the past twenty years, Annemarie Jacir has established herself as one of the preeminent Palestinian filmmakers in contemporary cinema, having written and directed three remarkable feature films and numerous shorter works. Her feature debut, SALT OF THIS SEA (2008) was the first feature-length narrative film by a Palestinian woman, and her subsequent features – WHEN I SAW YOU (2012) and WAJIB (2017) – have been widely acclaimed. Alongside her filmmaking, Annemarie Jacir has furthered the cause of Palestinian cinema through her work as a curator. She has organized numerous programs and festivals, above all the pioneering “Dreams of a Nation” project (2003). The first Palestinian film festival to take place in NYC, “Dreams of a Nation” traveled throughout Palestine the following year, and marked the first screenings within Palestine itself of many of the foundational works of Palestinian cinema.

Annemarie Jacir
WAJIB
2017, 96 min, DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles.
Starring real-life father and son Mohammad and Saleh Bakri, Annemarie Jacir’s comic drama explores the lives of Palestinians living in Israel. The title of Wajib translates as “duty”, and it’s duty that brings architect Shadi from Rome back to Nazareth, where his sister Amal is to be married. Local tradition dictates that Shadi and his divorced dad, Abu Shadi, must drive around town delivering wedding invitations. Friction is in the air even before the duo clamber into Abu Shadi’s beloved and beaten-up old Volvo. Shadi thinks the exercise is outdated and meaningless. For his father, it’s about maintaining important community rituals. Bakri and son Saleh are terrific and earthily funny as the bickering duo who meet colorful characters on their cross-city travels. Jacir brings a worldly, wise, and witty eye to this hugely entertaining and illuminating slice of Palestinian life.

“What does it mean to be a Palestinian abroad? What does it mean to be a Palestinian at home? Can the struggle between the two identities tell us something honest about a Palestinian society living under the Israeli occupation? […] WAJIB is a day-long road trip into a very diverse Palestinian community, which is sometimes treated with a subtle and slightly dark humor; it’s a community that the father struggles to keep united and the son simply no longer understands. Wajib means ‘duty’ in Arabic – here, that denotes the duty to accept each other, to keep identity alive in a city where Israel doesn’t recognize Palestinian citizens as Palestinians, and also the duty to criticize (as Jacir has publicly declared) the Palestinian leadership that seems to be more and more disconnected from the people than ever.” – Lorenzo Esposito, CINEMA SCOPE