Mideast conflict looms over
Arab Film Festival’s featured movie
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Firas Nassar and Mouna Hawa star in “Between Heaven and Earth,” part of the San Diego Arab Film Festival. (Ustura Films)
‘Between Heaven and Earth’ follows a Palestinian couple going through a divorce under difficult circumstances
By JACKIE BRYANT
JUNE 4, 2021 5 AM PT
The past year and a half has not been kind to film festivals. COVID-19 ensured that many were canceled, while others decided to move operations entirely online. The San Diego Arab Film Festival, which runs from June 5 to 19 and is now in its 10th year, endures among the backdrop of another crisis: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which recently re-erupted into an armed fight and once again brings Arab issues to the global stage.
The festival has opted for a hybrid of online and in-person viewing of its 16 films from across the Arab diaspora. The in-person viewings will take place at the Museum of Photographic Arts and will require those in attendance to wear masks. Attendance is capped at 50 percent of the theater’s capacity.
This year, the festival has decided to highlight Palestinian cinema with the selection of its featured film, “Between Heaven and Earth,” directed by Najwa Najjar.
“Our community, and our festival, are affected by events in the Arab world,” says festival co-chair Larry Christian. “Events in Jerusalem, the attacks on worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and the attempt to expel Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah, and the attack on Gaza have energized and activated the community here,” he says. He adds that, although the Arab community in San Diego is made up of people from many Arab countries, Palestine is a “central part of Arab identity. Many see the festival as an opportunity to express their solidarity as well as their cultural identity.”
It is impossible to view the feature film, and consider the festival as a whole, without keeping these events in mind.
“It really is a love story,” Najjar says from her home in Jerusalem. “Between Heaven and Earth” chronicles the journey of Salma and Tamer, a 30-something Palestinian couple in the middle of divorcing.
The couple have varying citizenship statuses, despite theoretically living in the same geographic area — he is a West Bank ID cardholder and is the son of a murdered Palestinian journalist and revolutionary, while she has Israeli residency. For the first time in their five-year-long marriage, he was finally granted a three-day permit to enter Nazareth, which happened to be for their divorce hearing. During the hearing, shocking secrets about Tamer’s father and family are revealed, setting off a fictional narrative that was inspired by real-life events. The story highlights the crushing realities of trying to be human, trying to love, while enduring both acute and generational trauma as a result of living in an occupied state.
Najarr says the film is about “living in a place where it’s really, really a difficult place to live, trying to get married, have a partner, and have kids, you sit there and deal with daily humiliations. You have to deal every day with going out, facing checkpoints, worrying about your kids — it makes life unbearable.”
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“Despite all the talks about peace, there is no peace, there was a wall coming up. And then you have to come home! And cook. And clean. And be with your kids, and be happy, and have a happy marriage, and try to be happy with your husband. It puts a huge strain on your relationships,” Najjar explains, saying that while the movie is not “immediately personal,” in many ways she sees herself echoed in its narrative. “It’s marriage under occupation,” she says.
That a Palestinian film is the feature while an armed conflict rages on is actually a coincidence in timing, says Christian, who is also president of KARAMA, a sponsoring organization of the festival that is an “independent, non-partisan organization seeking to promote understanding of the issues facing the Arab and Islamic world, and of the Palestinian issue in particular,” according to its website.
“We selected it for a couple of reasons,” Christian says of “Between Heaven and Earth,” noting that the “issues it addresses are relevant to both the past and the present. That was true before the current crisis and remains so.” He adds that this film gives insight into the perspectives of people living under occupation, adding human context, and also that, practically speaking, “Palestinian films always attract the biggest audiences for our festival.”
When asked about what she hoped American audiences might take away from her film, Najjar needed a moment to think. While there is so much universality in her characters’ stories, it is impossible to separate it from their political realities.
“Creating a story about love and divorce, which also talks about racism and discrimination within the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, required courage in the hopes that American audiences will see beyond the television images and horrific stereotypes,” she says. She hopes that audiences in the United States “realize that real people’s lives are at stake and that it is not OK to be occupied, nor to live a life without dignity and rights.”
Bryant is a freelance writer.
San Diego Arab Film Festival
When: June 5-19
Tickets: $60 festival pass; $40 three-film pass; individual films $15 (discounted to $12 for students)
Online: sandiegoaff.sparqfest.live
In-person viewings: Museum of Photographic Arts, Balboa Park
