Noce en Galilée
‘Urs fi Al-Jalil | Wedding in Galilee | Nozze in Galilea
by
MOVIE CATEGORY
The agreement between the Palestian patriarch Mukhtar and the Israeli soldiers is clear: the former can organize the wedding of his son Adel only if some of the aforementioned soldiers are admitted to attend. The tensions that will result from this choice, as well as from the personal discontent of some members of the Palestianian community in Galilee, will create a complex and tense day of celebrations.
The first entirely fictional film made in the occupied Palestinian territories by a Palestinian director, after the hybrid of fiction and documentary that was Fertile Memory in 1980, Wedding in Galilee unravels, in unity of place and during a single day, the branching threads of a narrative skein that moves from the great problem of the relationship between Palestine and Israel towards the intimate and personal discomforts of some young protagonists, not only incapable of seeing much beyond the horizon of their immediate future, but also incapable of standing up to the old and proud customs of their parents. Revelation at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.
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.
