Jacqueline Rush Rivera: Anne-Marie, from where are you joining us today?
Annemarie Jacir: Hi, it’s good to be with you. I’m joining you from Palestine.
Jacqueline: We are honored that you’re here with us today. I personally have followed your work for several years. Your film, Palestine 36, just had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5th. It’s your fourth feature to screen at TIFF, is that right?
ANNEMARIE: That’s right, yes.
Jacqueline: Watermelon Pictures has already acquired the film for theatrical release. The film has already been selected to represent Palestine at the Oscars. For any filmmaker, that’s about as good as it gets. But at the same time, we’re going on almost two years of watching the world’s first live streamed genocide in Gaza, which is still going on now. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like at the screening at Toronto, the red carpet, the press moments, and everything in between?
Annemarie: Yeah. Thank you very much. I’m happy to join you. Toronto was such a great moment for us. A lot of our team was there. The cast and the crew were there. We were so honored by TIFF to be given a gala premiere and opening weekend of the festival. It really meant a lot. And at the same time, it was very painful to be there. We didn’t want a red carpet. I mean, all of this stuff that’s this performance of everything that’s going on I mean in the last two years … it was a struggle. It was such a struggle to make this film, to complete it. We were supposed to start filming before the genocide began. A week before we were prepped and ready to go. And then we just kept going. And we’ve been in sort of a crazy whirlwind where I think we just kept filming, shooting, planning in a place you can’t plan, in a lot of pain and with our friends, our colleagues, our family in Gaza, and we just did what we know how to do as artists and filmmakers and it’s just to keep going.
But coming to Toronto, I think it was the first time the cast saw the film. A lot of the crew were seeing it for the first time. And it was the first time with an audience, of course. And I think that was, we were all dressed up, but with like broken hearts inside. You know what I mean? And then after the end, the reception of the audience is something that I will never forget in my life. I don’t think any of us will. It was so moving. And yeah, like holding all of those things happening at once, right? The success of the film and as you said, the very painful reality of what’s happening in Gaza at the same time.
Jacqueline: Yes, I was reading that originally the plan was to film Palestine 36 in Bethlehem and as you just mentioned that things had to change at the last minute because of what was happening in Gaza.
The cast is incredibly impressive. It includes the great Hiam Abbass, Saleh Bakri, Jeremy Irons, Liam Cunningham, Yasmine Al Massri, Dhafer L’Abidine, Wardi Eilabouni, Yafa Bakri, et cetera, et cetera, a huge cast. The story’s set 12 years before the 1948 Nakba. I would say maybe a few years ago that wasn’t a period that was as known [outside of Palestine] as it has been in the last few years. Now, there are a lot of people reading Rashid Khalidi and Ghassan Khanafani and others, right, which maybe wasn’t expected in pre-production. I’ll ask you about that. You set it during the 1936 to 1939 Arab Revolt when Palestinians rose up against British colonial rule. Why was it important for you to set your story during this time?
Annemarie: For me, that is the critical, really the critical moment of our history. And it sets everything up for what happens, as you said, 12 years later with the Nakba. I think people often talk about the Palestinian story as beginning with the Nakba, beginning with exile, beginning with the loss of Palestine. And that revolt of 1936, it was a farmer-led revolt that was almost successful- it really was almost successful, it really gave the British a run for their money and then they took it to a whole other level because they lost control the revolt what had a successful element to it and they so they just stepped it up and brought in thousands more troops planes military machinery weapons and crushed it.
And I think it’s really interesting to see and understand the life that existed at that time, the life that was in Palestine, and characters that have no idea that soon, in 12 years, it’s going to really drastically change. So there was that kind of work with the cast because of course we’re doing it today and we all know what happened, yeah there’s so much to say about that, but basically I just think it’s a fantastic and such a critical moment in our history and to understand that to know about it is very important to know what’s happening now.
Jacqueline: Yeah, we are very excited to see it. I think of the process of making films, and I think that must be true for many Palestinian filmmakers, is that you’re telling stories about something that is still happening. How do you all take care of yourselves during these moments as artists while you’re making these films?
Annemarie: Yeah, well, you’re actually the first person to ask that question in a way.
I talk about how painful it was, but I don’t think I can express it. And because we’re still in it, we’re still in the middle of this, I hope not in the middle, but we’re in the genocide. It’s happening in front of us. It is unbelievable. It’s almost two years now and that death and destruction is still going. It’s just shocking. And when we were filming, I think that everybody dealt with it in their own way. Some people really just stuck their heads in the ground. They just had to be like; this is what we’re focusing on. We’re going to make this film. This film is important. We are making this film. We do this work. I’m not going to look at my news. I’m not going to open social media. I’m not, because it’s just like seeing children and all this death all day long.
And we know those people. Those people in Gaza are not far away. They talk like us. They sound like us. They are us. We are related to them. They are our friends. We know the ones that have survived. We know those who have not survived. It’s very close to all of us. What was really difficult, I think, was that the film has moments of military violence in it and that was really interesting in two ways that the extras and the cast could immediately … I was very nervous I mean I haven’t made a film of this scope before so how do you direct that how do you direct violence like that and it was sadly easy because we could all access it very quickly the feeling and the pain of it, everybody, extras, cast, and even the crew. It was very much real. It also meant that we really had to stop sometimes. There is an actress in the film who actually passed out on set at one moment. She was so emotional she fainted. I watched her faint on my monitor and the camera woman thought that she was acting, and I could see that she [fainted]. I ran out to the set, and she was on the grass, she actually fainted. Yeah, so how do we take care of ourselves? I don’t know. I don’t know but we do what we do, yeah?
Jacqueline: Thank you for all that … I wanted to back up a little bit and talk a little bit about where you were born and what first drew you to storytelling and poetry and filmmaking?
Annemarie: Well, I think it has to do, what draws me to storytelling is that I come from a family of writers and artists, and not in a traditional way, but that’s what they did. My grandfather was a writer. My mother was a teacher, but I was very creative. Creativity has very much been a part of survival for us, I think, and expression. I was drawn to writing at a very young age. I was keeping a diary when I was eight years old. I have that diary. Yes, it’s embarrassing. It’s just about crushes and things like that. But I was writing. I was always writing. And I remember my father was always saying to me, “You’re just like your grandfather. She’s like constantly writing, writing, writing.” I thought I would come to cinema through writing. I did come to cinema through writing, but I thought I would stay. as a writer.
Jacqueline: Oh, interesting …
Annemarie: Yeah, what I wanted to do was screenwriting when I went to film school much later after I worked in the industry for some time and didn’t feel I was learning enough about the craft of filmmaking. I applied to film school much later in life and I went there to write not to direct, initially.
I also wanted to add, because you brought up my childhood, is that growing up in Saudi Arabia was a big part of that. Because we grew up in a place where we really had to create our world. We had to create our entertainment. We had to entertain ourselves. We had to entertain each other. We didn’t have…any of the whatever normal things that a lot of people have of movies of going out even running around the neighborhood it was all like a kind of creating a world in which to exist and the second part of that is my parents are from Bethlehem and my family was all my grandparents were still in Bethlehem at the time everybody was in Bethlehem and we used to spend our time with them all our summers and all our winters were there since I was a baby and that had a tremendous effect on me also because it’s there that I witnessed occupation military occupation what it meant to be different to be strip search at the border, to be in a city where there was a constant military presence, where things were not, everything was forbidden. It was forbidden to gather in groups. It was forbidden. I mean, all those things that you’re not allowed to do. But with parents who didn’t talk to me about what was happening, they didn’t explain it. So, it was all through feeling through them.
You know, feeling what humiliation is, feeling what and seeing it. I have a very strong visual image of, you know, snipers on roofs, you know, the sitting in front of my grandmother’s house. We always sat on the stairs in front of the house, looking at the street and eating fruit and just watching, you know, counting how many times a patrol jeep goes by, which would be like every five minutes, you know.
Jacqueline: And you obviously have put a lot of these experiences into your films, which are some of my favorite films, I’ll tell you that right now. In 2007, you shot the first feature film made by a Palestinian woman director, right? Salt of This Sea It’s a story about a Palestinian American working-class woman played by the poet Suheir Hammad, who’s amazing in this.
And her parents were Palestinian refugees and she’s making her first visit to Palestine. And it’s also the first time I saw Saleh Bakri in a film who comes from an incredible acting family and is such an amazing actor. There’s a quality that I find in your films from Salt of This Sea, When I Saw You, like 20 impossibles, that evokes this really strong connection to the land and the culture. Your cast is always superb, they’re portraying these really warm characters that stay with the viewer, they’re people that you kind of want to know and hang out with.
Annemarie: Thank you.
Jacqueline: There are a couple of things that I wanted to ask you about your features. And I still haven’t seen WAnnemarieib. It’s hard to find in the States. I’m still chasing it.
Annemarie: Watermelon Pictures is going to have it. It was on Netflix and it was in Europe and it was all over but, in the U.S., it’s always been a little more difficult to reach the audiences there but Watermelon’s going to carry it and I’m very happy.
Jacqueline: So hopefully the audience will forgive me for this-we won’t give away too many spoilers-but I wanted to talk about the endings of your films and we talked a little bit about this just now but you’re telling these stories where the people in your film and in real life are affected by this ongoing catastrophe but of course there’s a lot of these very sweet and funny moments, complicated moments, sometimes these romantic moments, throughout the films but at the end it seems like, they’re incredible endings, and it feels like you can’t really finish it because the [occupation], as we were saying, continues. And I’m just very curious about what your process is for coming up with these very elegant, powerful endings that aren’t really endings.
Annemarie: You know, you just saying that, that they’re not really endings made me realize that they’re not, that I don’t … they’re not the end. They’re never the end. I don’t decide those endings or they actually … now you made me just think about all my endings so far and there’s actually something in common with all of them that I never thought about till this moment.
Jacqueline: Oh, wow.
Annemarie: Because I don’t write one film thinking, you know, what was the ending before. And they come in different ways. The end of When I Saw You was the first thing that I had thought about when I started writing that script. That scene was the beginning of the writing process before I had the characters, the mother, and the son and that running. But this running towards the border and one of them pulling the other one forward for the first time that was always the one that was pulling back before. That film started with that.
And then Salt of This Sea was a very different process, I would say. But it begins with the arrival and ends with the departure was something that I don’t even remember if that was the original structure or the structure I got to after some years of writing. Because I worked on that film for a long time. I carried that film with me for a very long time.
Yeah, but I like the openness of films. I much prefer when I watch films I don’t need the ending. I don’t need to know that everything’s been tied up, and everything is either destroyed or okay or whatever. I need, maybe it’s hope also. It’s a kind of something to hold on to in a very abstract way.
Jacqueline: And of course, it really seems to respect the reality of what’s happening in your homeland and respect the people that are going through it, right? The other thing I wanted to ask you about, going back to working with Saleh Bakri, who I believe has been in all of your feature films-he’s great in everything that he does-he’s now been in so many films and I think is one of the greatest actors, in my opinion. The pairing of the two of you together is really magic. And I’m curious what it is about your working relationship where you bring that out in each other. It seems like you’re almost like each other’s muses. Is that … do you know what I mean?
Annemarie: I mean, Saleh is an amazing actor, as you said. He’s an amazing artist and thinker and intellectual and he is so deeply involved in his world and what’s happening around him sometimes there’s no separation. I mean he just, he feels everything and I mean, when we worked together for the first time [on Salt of This Sea], it was his first film. It was my first film. I remember I still have that audition of him. I was looking for the character of Ahmed and there were a lot of audition tapes coming in and I was going around, auditioning people. And the first thing I saw of him was a video. And I was very struck by that audition he did. And immediately I said, Who is this guy?
And the casting director didn’t even say anything about Mohammed Bakri [Saleh’s father, the legendary actor]. He just said, oh, he’s an actor in the north that’s been in theater, but he hasn’t done any film yet. I said, I have to meet him. And I went up north and I just still remember our very first conversation and the intensity that is Saleh. So, yeah, we immediately clicked and he’s in all my films because I think he’s an amazing person and actor and he allows me also to … there’s a certain flexibility that I don’t know I mean I think most actors are open to that but solid for example with Salt of This Sea I asked him to live in this refugee camp in Ramallah for three months because he comes from a very different place not from a refugee camp although he’s of course familiar with them but I wanted him to live there. I wanted him to wake up, sleep, walk around, become friends, and immediately, I mean of course, he said yes and he disappeared doing that. It became everything for him. We weren’t even having traditional rehearsals. I have to find a way to set up the situation for him, and he goes for it and he doesn’t need a lot of talking and a lot of help, he works on feelings and so I think that’s why he’s such a great actor.
Jacqueline: Amazing.
Annemarie: Yeah. And now we’re neighbors and we’re very close friends and we have a long history.
Jacqueline: Incredible. I think it is one of the best collaborations out there, honestly. And so, all of this, right? Film festivals love you. You’ve shown at Cannes, the Berlin International Film Festival, Venice International, like all the big ones, Rotterdam, Toronto, Telluride, et cetera.
All three of your features have been selected as Palestine’s Oscar entry, right?
Annemarie: For a foreign language film, that’s right. For now, with Palestine 36, the fourth.
Jacqueline: Wow, of course, right. Your short film, like 20 Impossibles is mentioned all the time as the first Arab short film ever to be in an Official Selection at Cannes International Film Festival. For many artists, that is enough, right? Like that is a lot, right? You’re writing these stories, you’re directing these stories, you’re putting together these incredible casts and you’re getting critical recognition, right? But then beyond that, you also do a lot of work in education and collaborative work. And it’s the kind of thing that I see here [in the U.S.] with Indigenous filmmakers, and, when you’re here, I’m sure you have to, with Indigenous filmmaker communities, right? And I’m totally fascinated by that.
I read that you had organized a traveling film festival. I think that was around 2003 with archival films you were showing in different towns in Palestine. You are a founding member of the Palestinian Filmmakers Collective based in Palestine. You founded Philistine Films where you collaborate with fellow filmmakers. I know that you’ve supported folks like Farah Nabulsi with her incredible film that I saw earlier this year, The Teacher, also starring Saleh Bakri. And then you’re the co-founder of an artist-run space, Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir, for art and research in your hometown of Bethlehem. That is all incredible and very exciting. In VoxFem, there are a lot of organizers, educators, and people doing social justice work. Can you tell me a little bit about what drives you to do that? And maybe a couple of your favorite projects within all of that?
Annemarie: Yeah. Wow. Okay. I mean, I think when I started making films, I was very lonely. And I couldn’t find my community. I couldn’t find- yeah, I mean, I couldn’t find my community. I couldn’t find mentors. And there was very little support for the kinds of films I was making. And financially even, I mean, it’s still, the situation is still bad. I mean, it takes us years and years to finance our films.
So I think I was looking for a community and the fact that I could travel, I had the privilege to travel, that I move around a lot, education, training, like building that community, being part of collectives, being part of working together, everybody doing something else for somebody else to make their work happen.
It’s something that’s very basic and from the beginning it’s been that way and also, I’m an activist I mean was very involved in the Palestinian activist circles and it’s all about community and standing strong together especially in the face erasure it’s even more critical.
So also, in terms of the industry of filmmaking is that a lot of films were coming to Palestine and a lot of foreign crews would come and film and then leave. And it was clear that if we’re trying to build our own industry and we’re trying to be independent, we’re trying to be free as a people, it also means our cinema has to be free and independent. We have to do it ourselves.
And I remember with Salt of This Sea, the main producers were French and when we were crewing up, they, of course, were suggesting heads of departments from Europe. And I was hiring as many Palestinians as I could. And they were not opposed to that but concerned. You’re making your first feature. You’re a young woman making your first feature. It’s going to be really difficult for you. You know, having more experienced people on set will help you. And I’d rather give opportunities to less experienced people like myself doing this film but their heart is in the right place. It means something to us to make these films. It’s not a job, it’s a matter of survival somehow and I think that means more maybe, yeah, it’s messier maybe it’s you know whatever a lot of a lot of things- chaotic. But I think we work well with chaos. We’ve learned to do that. But I felt very strongly about that and have continued doing things in that way as much as I can. Sometimes you don’t have a choice when you have co-productions, and you need to have certain people. And some things are definitely lacking, and it’s also part of the training.
You know, Helen Louvart, who I’ve worked with now on two films, is an amazing cinematographer. She is a masterclass by herself. I mean, her being on set, her being even in the grading room, I mean, I sometimes look at her, I’m like, I wish everybody could just watch her work. Like, I wish everyone could be as lucky as just to see how she works, because it’s incredible. She’s not a traditional teacher, but everything she does is a masterclass. So, yeah, did I, where was I going? There was a second part of your question.
Jacqueline: Yeah, that’s perfect. Yeah, the question is you could just be an amazing filmmaker. And all of that, right, like the collaboration, the education, the concern for community. I think one of the things that’s amazing to me right now is that another filmmaker that I interviewed for this festival, Anisia Uzeyman, co-director and cinematographer of Neptune Frost, discussed the exact same thing. And in my experience as a film programmer, this is the first time I’ve had a conversation go this deep about that. She too, she said, when I was in Rwanda, she didn’t I wanted the heads of departments to be Rwandans right and that was the first time they had the opportunity to do that otherwise films are coming in from Hollywood or whatever they’re going to have smaller roles and they’re going to bring in heads departments from the outside and so that’s incredible I love that thank you for all of that.
The other thing that I wanted to ask you about Palestine is sort of a land of poets it seems there are from you attended Columbia university where poets and writers galore as well Edward Said taught there yeah there’s a lot yeah yes today is Refaat al-Areer’s birthday I was kind of like spinning through news today and saw that incredible human being and poet who was killed in in Gaza in December of 2023 yeah we have as non-Palestinians through the reality of the violence there have learned about a lot of these poets and writers, right? So, in learning about current events and history, that was our opening into learning about Mohamed El-Kurd, Musab Abu Toha, Stephen Salaita, et cetera, Susan Al-Buhawa. You are a poet as well.
And your films are very poetic so that that makes a lot of sense, they’re connected, films and poetry definitely connected, cinema and poetry is so such a closely aligned art form I think and poetry obviously being something that’s been around for thousands of years cinema relatively new Is there a connection for you between your poetry writing and screenwriting, filmmaking, et cetera?
Annemarie: Yeah, I mean, I think we have, as you said, we have so many poets and writers, fantastic writers, and also filmmakers. And that’s sort of what I wanted to mention earlier. I was amazed when I was living in Ramallah at the number of filmmakers there were, or people who were making their first films or working on them and the works weren’t known. The works weren’t getting out. I think considering the number of Palestinian filmmakers there are we are not hearing and seeing enough of their work at those big festivals all those festivals that you mentioned Berlin, Venice, Cannes where are the Palestinian filmmakers they choose one to represent it’s always every region has this problem. I know with Eastern Europe it’s the same thing and one Eastern European film and one Arab film and one Latin film and we check the box and nobody’s creative enough to try to see and dig deeper into that at the bigger festivals. I think it’s a real problem now and I think it’s actually getting worse, I really do. But we have a lot of poets. And I grew up reading a lot of poetry. Also, we grew up around writers. But we also grew up around readers. Everybody in my family was reading constantly. And there were poetry books in the house. And I read those a lot as a child. And I wrote poetry just for myself, really. And I don’t, I would never call myself a poet when our real poets, our real Palestinian poets are so amazing. And I would never even attempt to call myself a poet in front of them. But I do write poetry and I do love poetry. And it is aligned to the cinema. And I think in all of my films, I think.
In Toronto, there was a very Palestinian poet and writer named Lina Khalaf Tufaha. She now lives in the U.S., in Seattle. She’s an amazing writer and she came up to me right after the screening and she said, “I know you’re a poet from your films. I always see it in all your films. I know I recognize the references. I know that the nods you’re doing, and a lot of people are going to miss those.” But she said she knows them and it made me really happy; I was very pleased.
Jacqueline: Amazing. I love that. Okay, well, I could talk to you, Anne-Marie, forever. I know you are a very busy person. As you said, putting together these films is a lot. Getting the funding, actually making the film, especially when you’re trying to make them in Palestine, and all the various challenges that you’re going to encounter. So, it’s, as I said to Anizia Uzeyman, another guest at the festival, it’s easy for us to just sort of watch the films, read about the films and then say, what’s next, right? What’s next? But I am curious if you are working on something that you’d like to share.
Annemarie: I am, I think I need, I’m recovering because this film was really the biggest that I’ve done. And it was because of every, it was already the biggest project I’d ever done. And then with everything that happened and having to stop and start production four times and just the last two years of trying to finish this, this one really took it out of me.
and so, I said I’m going to take some time off but I already have a couple of projects and I’m talking to people about other things – and I can’t really – I’m not one of those people who is very good at vacations. I’m like I’ll go on vacation and then after like a day or two, I’m bored and I start thinking of things to do, and so … but nothing to talk about yet, no.
Jacqueline: Okay, well, we’ll definitely be looking out. We’ll put a link to Watermelon Pictures and some of your other films on the website. And I really want to thank you for being with us today. This has been a total thrill and an honor. And we wish you the very best. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Annemarie: And thanks for all your work that you guys are doing. Really, thank you. Thank you.
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