Palestine | 108 MINUTES | Arabic, English |
SALT OF THIS SEA
Drama, Female Director(s)
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Soraya (spoken-word artist Suheir Hammad) travels to Palestine to retrieve her grandfather's savings, frozen in a Jaffa bank account after his 1948 exile. Struggling to feel at home in the land of her ancestors, she meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. When confronted with unwieldy official policies that deny her access to the fruit of her grandfather's life's work, she must take things into their own hands, even if it's illegal. Stubborn, passionate, and determined to reclaim what's theirs, she and Emad set out on a road trip for poetic justice across a lush Palestinian (now Israeli) landscape—after which there is no return.
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.