The Time That Remains

Last night hubby and I attended the cine club in support of the Arab Women's Association here. The film they were showing was titled "The Time that Remains". It is a semi biographic film, in four historic episodes, about the Suleiman family spanning from 1948, until recent times.

This film was directed by Elia Suleiman inspired by his father's diaries of personal accounts, starting from when he was a resistant fighter in 1948, and by his mother's letters to family members who were forced to leave the country since then.

Suleiman combines sometimes absurd essays and brightly colored touching moments of family intimacy with tense scenes of abuse at the hands of Israelis. He also portrays his intimate memories of them and with them. The film attempts to show the daily life of those Palestinians who remained in their land and who were labeled "Israeli-Arabs", living as a minority in their own homeland.

I am not a film critic and never have I attempted to be one, but this more than an hour movie, I swear I could see me rolling on the cold floors of the hall and sucking everyone’s toes out of boredom. It was the most boring movie that I have ever come across in my entire life, but then again this was the message that the movie was trying to give to us.

The Palestinians were living their life that way, being bored, repeating the same thing day in and day out, talking about the same subject and losing interest in how to come out of the situation as they were heavily guarded by the Israeli’s army.

This movie, by the way, was awarded the following awards:
Best Narrative Film MEIFF - Abu Dhabi - 2009.
Selection officielle compétition - Festival de Cannes.
Black Pearl Award - Best Middle Eastern Narrative Film.

I wanted to walk out of the movie a couple of times but hubby thought it will be so inappropriate for us to do so, since we came in support of the Arab women’s association’s good cause.

I can give a pat on my head for lasting such a movie, but that’s life!