Director: I feel grateful to share it with the audience… and it is inspired by the truth
In conjunction with the development of events in Gaza, the Palestinian film “The Professor” comes to shed light on the human side of what is happening on the ground of the conflict. It is a film written and directed by Farah Al-Nabulsi, and produced by a British-Palestinian-Qatari. It is considered the first Palestinian film to be shown in Saudi cinemas, and was released before… A week, and it is still being shown in 3 Gulf countries: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Emirates.
The film won two awards at the last session of the “Red Sea International Film Festival” in Jeddah 2023, the “Best Actor Award,” which went to actor Saleh Bakri, and the second, the “Special Jury Award,” which went to the film’s director, Farah Al-Nabulsi. Taking into account that the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, it was also included in the long list of the 2023 British Independent Film Awards in 3 categories: Best Debut Director, Best First-time screenwriter and innovative producer.
Director Farah Al-Nabulsi while receiving the award for her film at the last session of the Red Sea Festival (Middle East)
the story of the movie
The events of the movie “The Professor” deal with the story of teacher Bassem Al-Saleh (actor Saleh Bakri), a Palestinian professor who struggles to deal with a painful personal experience that he suffered after a tragic accident involving his son. However, his life takes an unexpected turn after he forms a strong friendship with Adam, one of his students. At the same time, his relationship with British volunteer “Lisa” (Imogen Poots) is forming. As the events unfold, a parallel story emerges, revolving around a high-ranking American lawyer who and his wife seek to return their son, an Israeli soldier detained by a Palestinian resistance group.
Hence, the group’s demand for a prisoner exchange raises tensions with the ruling authorities, who are intensifying the search for the missing soldier in a number of troubled conflict areas. During this exciting operation, the director, who was previously nominated for an Oscar, weaves together a group of disparate and interconnected dramatic stories at the same time. Together, through a drama full of sympathy, unexpected events, and continuous provocations based on the performance of Saleh Bakri, as the hero of the work.
Nabulsi: Inspired by the truth
Director Farah Al-Nabulsi says that the current events made her carry within her a mixture of pride and pain, attributing the reason for this to the heat of the events that had been going on for months in her home country, stressing that she was immersed in sadness because of the loss and suffering she saw regarding what was happening, according to her description, and she added, “ “The Professor” is inspired by real events and is largely rooted in reality, but it is not a documentary, but rather a fictional film.
Al-Nabulsi confirms, during a video clip that she filmed and published on her Instagram account, coinciding with the start of her film’s screening in three Gulf countries, that the film is primarily a human story, through which she tries to repel what she describes as brutal violence, not only in the past months, but for decades. long. She added: “I feel grateful that we can share this film with the audience.”
Actor Saleh Bakri plays the role of the Palestinian teacher Bassem Al-Saleh in the film (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Consecutive troubles
The film, which tells a Palestinian story with a rural character, deals with the Palestinians’ coexistence with the difficulties they have been facing for years, and depicts an aspect of life in the West Bank and the occupied interior, with mixed feelings between pain at times and struggle at other times, and some warm feelings in a fleeting love story within the film, and research into Dimensions of loss and feelings of despair. The essence of the conflict lies in the teacher who struggles to teach English to his students, and tries to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance, his emotional support for one of the students, and his chances of finding a lost love, and from here he makes a friendship with tension and obsessiveness towards everything, and tries to hide the simplest things in… Different places in his house, because he cannot guarantee that his day will pass normally without a sudden inspection.
Between “the professor” and “the gift”
It is worth noting that the movie “The Professor” brings back memories of the movie “The Gift,” which is a short Palestinian drama film produced in 2020. It is also directed by Palestinian-British director Farah Al-Nabulsi, and starring Saleh Bakri. The film also shows the ugly face of what is happening on the ground of conflict, with a tinge of Pure humanity that Nabulsi adopts in her films. Its events revolve around a father and his daughter from the West Bank who are trying to buy a gift for an important occasion for the family, and in the process they face several difficulties, which Al-Nabulsi shows in a way that pushes the audience to sympathize with the father and his unenviable situation.
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