Divine Intervention<\/strong><\/em><\/i><\/p>\nPalestinian Elia Suleiman is at the height of his powers with this series of deadpan, interconnected, absurdist vignettes about Palestinian life on either side of an Israeli military checkpoint. Mutely following the travails of two lovers \u2013 one who lives in Nazareth, the other in Ramallah \u2013 as they navigate the wall between them,\u00a0Divine Intervention <\/i>(2002)\u00a0is surreal, satirical and biting in its political criticism. It\u2019s both sad in its vision of the world but also warm in its humour.<\/p>\n
All but forgotten from the mainstream filmgoing consciousness, Jacques Tati\u2019s innovations with form and tone have been repurposed by filmmakers as varied as Roy Andersson, Aki Kaurism\u00e4ki, Ulrich Seidl and, perhaps most of all, Wes Anderson. But Suleiman\u2019s method of feeding the Tati-esque through the prism of Palestinian experience creates something completely new that walks a line between melancholy and absurdity. And what an amazing soundtrack!<\/p>\n
Divine Intervention is in English, Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles, and runs 92 minutes. It screens Oct. 6, 8:45 p.m., at VIFF Cinema, and Oct. 12, 3:45 p.m., at the Cinematheque. (18+)<\/p>\n
Palestine 36<\/i><\/b><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Set during the 1936 Palestinian uprising against British colonial rule, this historical drama follows an ensemble of characters. Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya), a peasant, straddles two worlds \u2013 the city of Jerusalem and his farming village. Denied fair wages, a Jaffa port dockworker (Saled Bakri) joins the rebel movement. Elsewhere, a widowed mother (Yafa Bakri) stashes away an heirloom gun in hopes of defending her family from the British military\u2019s raids.<\/p>\n
Shot on location and interspersed with archival footage, the film boasts an international cast, including Hiam Abbas, Jeremy Irons and Liam Cunningham. Palestine 36<\/i> (2025)\u00a0is the third feature from writer-director Annemarie Jacir to be selected as the Palestinian entry for best international feature at the Academy Awards.<\/p>\n
Palestine 36<\/i> is in Arabic and English with English subtitles, and has a running time of 118 minutes. The film is at Fifth Avenue Oct. 9, 9 p.m., and Oct. 10, 11:45 a.m. (19+)<\/p>\n
With Hasan in Gaza<\/i><\/b><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Three unearthed MiniDV tapes from 2001 offer a time capsule of life in Gaza before devastation. What begins as a search for a former prison mate leads to a road trip from the north to the south of Gaza, accompanied by Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown. As the camera moves through Gaza\u2019s streets and landscapes, it captures fleeting moments of everyday life: vendors, schoolchildren, shopkeepers, relatives and strangers, all going about their days in a place that, today, has been forever altered.<\/p>\n
In\u00a0With Hasan in Gaza<\/i> (2025), Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari transforms forgotten footage into a time capsule. What was once ordinary is now precious, even endangered. \u201cIt is a film about the catastrophe and the poetry that resists,\u201d Aljafari writes.<\/p>\n
With Hasan in Gaza is in Arabic with English subtitles, and runs 106 minutes. It screens Oct. 10, 3:30 p.m., at VIFF Cinema and Oct. 12, 6:30 p.m., at International Village 8. (18+)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u2013 from viff.org<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Franz stars newcomer Idan Weiss. (photo from lene Film Production) As it does every year, the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs Oct. 2-12, has offerings of particular interest to the Jewish community. Below are the synopses (less some of the hyperbole) from the festival\u2019s website of the three films featuring Jewish content, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[6133,6873,4330,7963,2085,1900,1916],"class_list":["post-47518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-fiction","tag-film","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-palestine","tag-vancouver-international-film-festival","tag-viff"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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