Wednesday, April 29, 2009

"Salt of This Sea" at Tribeca Film Festival


Salt of this Sea
By Annemarie Jacir (Palestine, 2008, 104 min, In Arabic & English)

New York Premiere
Starring Suheir Hammad and Saleh Bakri

Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather’s savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Stubborn, passionate and determined to reclaim what is hers, she fulfills her life-long dream of returning to Palestine. Slowly she is taken apart by the reality around her and is forced to confront her own internal anger. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even if it’s illegal.


"Annemarie is the Palestinian Jim Jarmush. She has developed her own cinema language, stubborn acting style and unconventional story telling, disobeying all the rules of traditional cinema." - Hany Abu-Assad, Director Paradise Now


"This film is my personal voice, intimate,... it's the voice of my family, of my village, of my people. It's the voice of every refugee searching for his rights.." - Saleh Bakri, actor


"Annemarie Jacir's award-winning directorial debut represents a fresh, viscerally affecting, and definitive statement from second- generation Palestinian Americans. Rife with symbolism, director of photography Benoit Chamaillard's color-saturated lensing of Palestinian landscapes and composer Kamran Rastegar's evocative score make palpable the yearning and frustration of a quest to reclaim what was stolen." - Roya Rastegar

No comments: