Annemarie Jacir’s epic drama, Palestine 36, contextualizes the horrific wars of today not as abstract anomalies that the nightly news portrays, but as the direct extensions of colonialism and Western interventionist agendas that have been evolving for decades. The film serves as a searing counter-narrative to colonial history, framing the 1936 Arab Revolt against British colonial rule as part of a blueprint for modern occupation.
An international co-production shot in Arabic and English in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Jordan (where filming was forced to relocate after the start of the Gaza war in October 2023), Jacir’s film features a large, multigenerational cast representing characters from distinct walks of life with cinema veterans Hiam Abbass, Saleh Bakri, Jeremy Irons, Liam Cunningham supporting an array of extraordinary performances that bring the experience of urban and rural Palestinians of the time to life as well as portrayals of British officers in command of “Mandatory Palestine.”
In a story with clear-eyed heroes and appalling villains, the most familiar characters are something in between. Disagreements within families and neighbors about where the growing restrictions placed on Palestinians by Britain would lead at a time when the influx of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe was growing portrays a time of frustration and uncertainty.
Newspaper editor Amir (Dhafer L’Abidine) thinks that despite the chaos, or maybe because of it, there could be lucrative partnerships to be made and does not support the strike against the British. “I adore you,” Amir says to his wife, the intrepid reporter Khuloud (Yasmine Al Massri), “even if we don’t agree on everything.”
Khuloud’s analysis of the times is very different. She reviews photos of the demonstrations and notes, “The British ban the keffiyehs and the street explodes with keffiyehs,” and in her eyes and tone we know exactly where her loyalty lies.
Later in the story, a conscience-stricken secretary to the British High Commissioner (Billy Howle) who has befriended Khuloud, is alarmed by the systematic shutting down of basic rights for Palestinians and tallies his concerns to his commanders, “We’ve shut down every Arab printing press, we’ve banned newspapers, censored their mail, and intercepted their telephone calls, we’ve set up check posts and curfews, we’ve even taken away their bloody livestock.”
“We don’t want another Ireland on our hands,” responds the Anglo-Irish police chief Charles Tegart, played by Liam Cunningham.
The mechanics of the origins of occupation evoke connections and parallels between 1936 and the present day. The film depicts vehicles stopped at checkpoints while Palestinian men are searched, propaganda is used as a tactic to confuse and control the public, efforts are made to obfuscate Christian and Muslim Arab solidarity, the banning of flags, the blowing up of civilian homes. Prototypical concentration camps are introduced via the rounding up of whole villages into fenced enclosures, a tactic imported from other British colonial fronts like Ireland and India, to employ collective punishment against villages where resistant fighters are suspected of having family ties. Bad faith intermediaries attempt to placate protesters with hollow rhetoric and empty gestures while the underlying structures of violence remain untouched.
The cultural trademarks of Palestinian resistance also feel contemporary, from the defiant smile of resistance of Palestinians who are arrested, the vital role of women in the culture and in the struggle, and traumatized children who are called to take up their place in the struggle much too soon because they are left no other choice.
Though the film’s structure operates on a grand scale and incorporates multiple intersecting storylines, its emotional core remains intimate, placing the heart of the story within the relationships of its characters and connection to the land over everything else.
Another of the film’s striking achievements is its visual texture that mixes colorized archival footage of Palestine showing the real life vibrant, bustling, multicultural, and religiously pluralistic society of the 1930s that transitions to the film’s original cinematography, which is palpable through a change of aspect ratio. The transitions are glorious and haunting, accentuating the drama’s commitment to authenticity as the production’s cast, expansive sets, colors, various landscapes, and architecture, all meld into a seamless tapestry of a society where not every character fully realizes they are about to enter a decades long struggle against erasure.
By the time the credits roll the film has made it clear that although the story is not over, it will never be erased.
*
Written and directed by Annemarie Jacir
Countries of Origin: Palestine / United Kingdom / France / Denmark / Norway / Qatar / KSA / Jordan / UAE, Year: 2025, Languages: Arabic, English 119 minutes | Color | DCP
Cast: Hiam Abbass, Saleh Bakri, Kamel Al Basha, Yasmine Al Massri, Jalal Altawil, Robert Aramayo, Yafa Bakri, Karim Daoud Anaya, Wardi Eilabouni, Ward Helou, Billy Howle, Dhafer L’Abidine, Jeremy Irons, Liam Cunningham
