British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi returns to her roots by shooting a film entirely in Palestine, particularly in Burin over three months, in an effort to highlight the issues the people in the area face.
The Teacher is screening at Red Sea Film Festival
Palestinian schoolteacher Basem grapples with loss after a tragic event involving his son, channeling his grief on helping his students, and particularly two brothers who come from the same village he does: Yakoub, who has just been released after two years detention in a military prison and currently acts as his brother's, Adam, “bodyguard”, with the latter being the brains and him the muscles as he so eloquently mentions in one of the first scenes of the movie. Lisa, a new social worker, also tries to help Yakoub, which is what brings her closer to Basem. At the same time, a high-profile American attorney and his wife...
The Teacher is screening at Red Sea Film Festival
Palestinian schoolteacher Basem grapples with loss after a tragic event involving his son, channeling his grief on helping his students, and particularly two brothers who come from the same village he does: Yakoub, who has just been released after two years detention in a military prison and currently acts as his brother's, Adam, “bodyguard”, with the latter being the brains and him the muscles as he so eloquently mentions in one of the first scenes of the movie. Lisa, a new social worker, also tries to help Yakoub, which is what brings her closer to Basem. At the same time, a high-profile American attorney and his wife...
- 12/9/2023
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
The initiative celebrates Arab talent and highlights the hottest up-and-coming actors, writers and directors from the region.
Screen International has unveiled the five emerging Middle East and North Africa talents in the fields of acting and directing selected for the seventh edition of Arab Stars Of Tomorrow.
This year’s line-up comprises Adwa Bader, the actress and poet from Saudi Arabia; Jordan’s Cynthia Madanat Sharaiha, director; Egyptian writer and director Morad Mostafa; Palestinian actor Muhammad Abed El Rahman; and fellow Jordanian actress Noor Taher.
The initiative celebrates Arab talent and highlights the hottest up-and-coming actors, writers and directors who...
Screen International has unveiled the five emerging Middle East and North Africa talents in the fields of acting and directing selected for the seventh edition of Arab Stars Of Tomorrow.
This year’s line-up comprises Adwa Bader, the actress and poet from Saudi Arabia; Jordan’s Cynthia Madanat Sharaiha, director; Egyptian writer and director Morad Mostafa; Palestinian actor Muhammad Abed El Rahman; and fellow Jordanian actress Noor Taher.
The initiative celebrates Arab talent and highlights the hottest up-and-coming actors, writers and directors who...
- 12/1/2023
- by Screen staff
- ScreenDaily
“The Teacher” opens with text informing the viewers that the film was “Inspired by True Events.” Most obviously, this refers to the case of Gilad Shalit, an Israel Defense Forces soldier whose imprisonment by Palestinian militants and 2011 release in exchange for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners is lightly fictionalized during the movie. But more broadly, it speaks to the film’s commitment to portraying the struggles of living in Palestine in a time of perpetual strife, where violence and displacement is a constantly looming threat and justice feels constantly out of reach.
Although Shalit’s capture and release inspired the backbone of Farah Nabulsi’s debut feature, his counterpart in the film, Nathanial Cohen, is a mere plot device spoken about more than he’s glancingly seen. Our protagonist is instead completely fictional Basem, a Palestinian man who teaches English at a small boys school. At his job he’s stern but gentle,...
Although Shalit’s capture and release inspired the backbone of Farah Nabulsi’s debut feature, his counterpart in the film, Nathanial Cohen, is a mere plot device spoken about more than he’s glancingly seen. Our protagonist is instead completely fictional Basem, a Palestinian man who teaches English at a small boys school. At his job he’s stern but gentle,...
- 9/10/2023
- by Wilson Chapman
- Indiewire
Writer-director Farah Nabulsi brilliantly showcased the abject futility of living under occupation with her Oscar-nominated short The Present a couple years ago. By taking the seemingly mundane act of going shopping for an anniversary gift and portraying how cruelly impossible it can become when people with guns take it upon themselves to make it so, she evoked the tired frustration and unavoidable rage that Palestinians must endure on a daily basis. It should come as no surprise, then, that her feature debut The Teacher would follow suit, mirroring the additional runtime with a much more robust example.
Yet there’s the immediate sense of too many subplots bouncing around at the start. Between the drama surrounding the harassment of brothers Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) and Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri), then the story segues into their teacher/neighbor Basem El-Saleh’s (Saleh Bakri) past, the addition of a London-born volunteer social worker...
Yet there’s the immediate sense of too many subplots bouncing around at the start. Between the drama surrounding the harassment of brothers Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) and Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri), then the story segues into their teacher/neighbor Basem El-Saleh’s (Saleh Bakri) past, the addition of a London-born volunteer social worker...
- 9/10/2023
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
Three years ago, Farah Nabulsi’s short film “The Present” landed an Oscar nomination and won a BAFTA Award by stripping down the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis on the West Bank to a father and daughter’s simple quest to buy an anniversary present. Nabulsi, who was born in London to Palestinian parents, returns to that region and conflict with her feature debut, “The Teacher,” but there’s nothing simple about the morass into which her filmmaking plunges us this time around.
Inspired by true events, the film is set among Palestinians on the West Bank, and like “The Present” it’s a portrait in futility. “The Teacher,” which had its world premiere on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival, sometimes feels as if it’s hammering away at the same points without getting anywhere, but you could argue that’s an entirely fitting way to depict the conflicts in that area.
Inspired by true events, the film is set among Palestinians on the West Bank, and like “The Present” it’s a portrait in futility. “The Teacher,” which had its world premiere on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival, sometimes feels as if it’s hammering away at the same points without getting anywhere, but you could argue that’s an entirely fitting way to depict the conflicts in that area.
- 9/10/2023
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
Few filmmakers have to experience the very real thing they’re dramatising on camera actually happening around their set. But then few films are set and shot in the Occupied West Bank.
As Farah Nabulsi recalls, while making The Teacher around the city of Nablus, she witnessed the forced demotion of a Palestinian home by Israeli forces and settlers torching Palestinian olive trees, both of which take place in her film.
“On my way to set at five in the morning, by the side of the road was a Palestinian family, a couple with six young children, standing in front of the rubble of their freshly demolished house,” she says. “So yeah, this harsh reality is unfolding around you.”
Premiering in Toronto on Sept. 9, the film follows a school teacher (Palestinian acting royalty Saleh Bakri) precariously trying juggling his dangerous involvement in the resistance movement with his position as a...
As Farah Nabulsi recalls, while making The Teacher around the city of Nablus, she witnessed the forced demotion of a Palestinian home by Israeli forces and settlers torching Palestinian olive trees, both of which take place in her film.
“On my way to set at five in the morning, by the side of the road was a Palestinian family, a couple with six young children, standing in front of the rubble of their freshly demolished house,” she says. “So yeah, this harsh reality is unfolding around you.”
Premiering in Toronto on Sept. 9, the film follows a school teacher (Palestinian acting royalty Saleh Bakri) precariously trying juggling his dangerous involvement in the resistance movement with his position as a...
- 9/9/2023
- by Alex Ritman
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
When British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi was watching the UK media coverage of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011, it had a profound impact on her. At the time, Shalit was an Israeli soldier who had been abducted in 2006 by Palestinians (the first Israeli soldier to be captured by Palestinians since 1994). Shalit was eventually released five years later in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of which were women and children.
“I remember thinking at the time that this was such a huge imbalance in the value for human life,” Nabulsi tells Deadline over a Zoom interview from Egypt, where she is attending her stepdaughter’s wedding. “One person in exchange for one thousand others! But I also remember thinking about that on an individual level and that, to that soldier’s parents and loved ones, he would be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives.”
This observation,...
“I remember thinking at the time that this was such a huge imbalance in the value for human life,” Nabulsi tells Deadline over a Zoom interview from Egypt, where she is attending her stepdaughter’s wedding. “One person in exchange for one thousand others! But I also remember thinking about that on an individual level and that, to that soldier’s parents and loved ones, he would be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives.”
This observation,...
- 9/8/2023
- by Diana Lodderhose
- Deadline Film + TV
Variety is debuting an exclusive clip from Farah Nabulsi’s thriller “The Teacher,” starring Imogen Poots (“The Father”) and Saleh Bakri. The film will have its world premiere on Saturday at the Toronto Film Festival in the Discovery section.
The film is Nabulsi’s feature debut following her Oscar-nominated and BAFTA award-winning short “The Present,” which also starred Bakri.
“The Teacher” follows Palestinian schoolteacher Basem (Bakri), who acts as a father figure to two of his students, Yacoub and Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), amidst turmoil in the West Bank. Upon meeting British volunteer worker Lisa (Poots), Basem struggles to reconcile his life-threatening commitment to political resistance and his emotional support for Yacoub and Adam with the chance of a new romantic relationship.
The story – based on true events – takes place against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering insight into the lives of the people living in the region from all religious and cultural backgrounds.
The film is Nabulsi’s feature debut following her Oscar-nominated and BAFTA award-winning short “The Present,” which also starred Bakri.
“The Teacher” follows Palestinian schoolteacher Basem (Bakri), who acts as a father figure to two of his students, Yacoub and Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), amidst turmoil in the West Bank. Upon meeting British volunteer worker Lisa (Poots), Basem struggles to reconcile his life-threatening commitment to political resistance and his emotional support for Yacoub and Adam with the chance of a new romantic relationship.
The story – based on true events – takes place against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering insight into the lives of the people living in the region from all religious and cultural backgrounds.
- 9/7/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
In the appealing, naturalistic drama “Alam,” a middle-class Arab teen living in a village in the Galilee undergoes a political awakening catalyzed by a pretty, outspoken girl from his high school class. Just like the protagonist, the audience, too, receives a provocative civics lesson on the symbolism — and power — of flags and what constitutes resistance. This intelligent, sensitive treatment of the rarely seen, everyday lives of young Palestinian citizens of Israel marks tyro feature writer-director Firas Khoury as a talent to watch, as well as a solid acquisition for Film Movement, the North American distributor. “The film. ”Alam” nabbed three prizes, including best film and audience award, at the Cairo Film Festival.
The story unfolds through the eyes of watchful, artistically-inclined Tamer, a high school senior nearing his matriculation exams. Like his friends, loudmouth Shekel (Mohammad Karaki) and electronic games nerd Rida (Ahmad Zaghmouri), Tamer shares the concerns of a typical male slacker: girls,...
The story unfolds through the eyes of watchful, artistically-inclined Tamer, a high school senior nearing his matriculation exams. Like his friends, loudmouth Shekel (Mohammad Karaki) and electronic games nerd Rida (Ahmad Zaghmouri), Tamer shares the concerns of a typical male slacker: girls,...
- 11/23/2022
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
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