Palestine, Belgium, France · 2008
1h 49m
Director Annemarie Jacir
Starring Suheir Hammad, Saleh Bakri, Riyad Ideis, Sylvie Wetz
Genre Drama, Romance
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Brooklyn-born Soraya travels to Palestine and Israel to reclaim both her family's home and their money taken during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Hoping to reunite with her grandfather, she seeks to experience the land her parents had to leave.
That the taste of Annemarie Jacir's feature debut should be bitter is completely understandable given the untenable Palestinian situation, but the heavy-handed, excessively didactic script plays like a primer for people only vaguely aware of the issues while overly confirmed in their righteousness.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Both written and played in broad strokes, each character quickly devolves into the most simplistic of symbols. The results comes across more as an agenda than art.
Annemarie Jacir, who was raised in Saudi Arabia, directs with flair and loving attention to the wild, damaged beauty of the contested landscape. But Soraya's rebellious bursts of rage come off more like the tantrums of a spoiled princess than the legitimate anger of an emerging activist.
Impassioned, but wearisomely didactic, diaspora drama.
Ultimately, in a film that highlights the physical barriers - walls, roadblocks, armed guards - that keep Palestinians where the Israelis want them, the film's biggest barrier is the one Jacir erects between Soraya and the viewer.
The New York Times by Mike Hale
A sad and engrossing look at a haunted landscape.
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