Run time: 118 mins

(Subtitled)

Farah Nabulsi’s bilingual debut provides a ringside view of the torn life of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Basem (Saleh Bakri) is a lonely English language teacher at a school filled with boys who have been brutally held in Israeli detention centres. One of those boys is Adam, a teen whose innocence is lost as he falls into a spiral of depression and rage. Working alongside British social worker Lisa (Imogen Poots), Basem finds himself caught between his commitment to political resistance and his role as a father figure to Adam. Meanwhile, Nathaniel Cohen, an American soldier who left his home in the U.S. to fight for Israel, has been taken hostage by a Palestinian resistance group, who are asking for 1,200 of their prisoners in exchange for his release.

It’s this imbalance of power and relative worth (or the lack of it) of human lives that is propels Nabulsi’s story. Shot on location in 2022, the film highlights not just the countless ways the Israeli occupying forces and settlers dehumanise and abuse Palestinians but the traumatic toll it continues to take. An unwavering examination of the cycle of violence, anger, resistance and hope sustaining the dream of a free Palestine.