Conte des trois diamants
Hikayat Al-Jawahir Al-Thalath | Tale of the three jewels | Racconto dei tre gioielli
by
MOVIE CATEGORY
Youssef lives in a refugee camp in Gaza with his mother and sister. The brother is an intifada militant wanted by the Israelis, the father is in prison. The boy catches and sells birds and one day he meets a gypsy girl, Aida, falling in love with her. He manages to see her again, despite the war and raids, and meets his grandmother. Aida tells him that she promised her grandmother to marry only the man who will find the legendary three jewels lost in South America, thus Youssef tries to leave with a cargo of oranges to look for them. Stopped in customs’ hold, he falls asleep, dreams and understands the meaning of the three jewels.
It is the first movie that was entirely realized on the Gaza Strip, where filming was made in clandestinity.
DIRECTORY
Born in Nazareth in 1950 to a Palestinian working class family and emigrated to Belgium in 1970 where he studied theatre and television at the INSAS in Brussels and worked for RTBF (Belgian Television), Michel Khleifi is considered the founder of contemporary Palestinian cinema and one of its more original voices.
His first feature-length documentary is Fertile Memory (1980), the first film made in Palestine under occupation, in which lyrical aesthetics and critical political commitment are combined.
With Zindeeq (2009), his latest feature film written and directed to date, he won the Golden Muhr at the Dubai International Film Festival 2009.
Khleifi lives in Brussels, where for over thirty years he taught directing at INSAS; furthermore, he has held numerous teaching positions at Columbia University, St Joseph University in Beirut and the AM Qattan Foundation in Palestine and Jordan.
