Tribute to Elia Suleiman
16-23/08/2024
Palestinian director Elia Suleiman was born in Nazareth. He directed his first multi-award-winning short films, INTRODUCTION TO THE END OF AN ARGUMENT and HOMAGE BY ASSASSINATION, while living in New York City from 1981 to 1993. In 1994, he settled in Jerusalem, where the European Commission had entrusted him with the mission of creating a Film and Media Department at Birzeit University. His first feature-length film, CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE, won the Best First Film Prize at the Venice International Film Festival in 1996. In 2002, DIVINE INTERVENTION, his second feature film, won the Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Festival de Cannes, as well as the European Film Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. In 2007, Suleiman was chosen as one of the thirty-six directors of TO EACH HIS OWN CINEMA, a collective film for the sixtieth anniversary of the Festival de Cannes. His feature THE TIME THAT REMAINS was selected for the Official Competition at Cannes in 2009. In 2012, he completed the short film DIARY OF A BEGINNER, part of the omnibus feature 7 DAYS IN HAVANA, which was presented in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. His most recent feature, IT MUST BE HEAVEN, won a Special Mention of the Jury and the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes in 2019. Suleiman has been a juror at numerous film festivals, including the Festival de Cannes and the Venice International Film Festival. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, among them the Prince Claus Award in 2008. He was named an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2020. He received the European Achievement in World Cinema in 2022 and an Honorary Doctorate from UCLouvain in Belgium in 2023. He currently serves as an artistic advisor to the Doha Film Institute.
Tribute to Elia Suleiman
16-23/08/2024
Saturday, 17/08/2024
Meeting Point Cinema, 15:00
Introduction to the End of an Argument
Canada, Palestine, 1990, Colour, 41 min.
Director: Jayce Salloum, Elia Suleiman
Chronicle of a Disappearance
Palestine, France, 1996, Colour, 84 min.
Director: Elia Suleiman
Cast: Ula Tabari, Nazira Suleiman, Fuad Suleiman, Jamal Daher, Elia Suleiman
Sunday, 18/08/2024
Meeting Point Cinema, 15:00
The Gulf War... What Next? (segment—Homage by Assassination)
Tunisia, Italy, United Kingdom, France, 1991, Colour, 28 min.
Director: Elia Suleiman
Cast: Elia Suleiman
Divine Intervention
France, Palestine, 2002, Colour, 92 min.
Director: Elia Suleiman
Cast: Manal Khader, Nayef Fahoum Daher, George Ibrahim, Salwa Nakkara, Elia Suleiman
Monday, 19/08/2024
Meeting Point Cinema, 15:00
To Each His Own Cinema (segment—Awkward)
France, 2007, Colour, 3 min.
Director: Elia Suleiman
Cast: Elia Suleiman
Cyber Palestine
Palestine, 1999, Colour, 16 min.
Director: Elia Suleiman
Cast: Khader Abou Sway, Serene Al Hamayel
The Time That Remains
Palestine, France, 2009, Colour, 105 min.
Director: Elia Suleiman
Cast: Saleh Bakri, Samar Qudha Tanus, Shafika Bajjali, Tarek Qubti, Zuhair Abu Hanna, Ayman Espanioli, Elia Suleiman
Tuesday, 20/08/2024
Meeting Point Cinema, 15:00
7 Days in Havana (segment—Diary of a
Beginner)
France, Cuba, Spain, 2011, Colour, 18 min.
Director: Elia Suleiman
Cast: Elia Suleiman
It Must be Heaven
France, Qatar, Germany, Canada, Türkiye, Palestine, 2019, Colour, 102 min.
Director: Elia Suleiman
Cast: Elia Suleiman, Tarik Kopti, Kareem Ghneim, George Khleifi, Ali Suliman, Fares Muqabaa, Yasmine Haj, Nael Kanj, Asmaa Azaizy, Grégoire Colin
Elia Suleiman: Chronicle of an Auteur
Interview by Nebojša Jovanović
OF A DISAPPEARANCE
OF A DISAPPEARANCE
Elia Suleiman / 30th Sarajevo Film Festival
CHRONICLE
CHRONICLE
CHRONICLE
CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE
CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE
Nebojša Jovanović: Not only are you the director in focus for this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival Tribute to... programme but you have also become a true friend of the festival, someone who clearly loves visiting Sarajevo. A reference to Bosnia is already found in your debut feature, Chronicle of a Disappearance, when the character played by your father listens to news about the efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Bosnia in the 1990s. This seems to echo the ongoing situation in Palestine, as if both regions are trapped in perpetual crisis. How do you reflect on this parallel today?
Elia Suleiman: I can’t say that, back in the 1990s, I considered the similarities in depth. From a Palestinian perspective, it was evident that there was a war in Bosnia, and we knew that horrific events, such as massacres and expulsions, were taking place. That scene in Chronicle of a Disappearance reflects that awareness: Palestinians understood that people elsewhere were suffering in much the same way they suffered, caught in a similar political situation. It was easy to identify the oppressed and the oppressor, even when the situation was complex and not always coherent—much like our own.
There was an intellectual tradition during that time, with prominent and sophisticated public figures from the West visiting Sarajevo during the war, contributing to the founding of the Sarajevo Film Festival, among other things. However, in my case the reaction came from identification through shared similar experience.
The Sarajevo Film Festival was founded as a form of cultural resistance. The simple pleasure of watching good films became an act of political resistance.
NJ: Where does humour play into this cultural and political resistance?
ES: I come from a place where humour and playfulness emerged from a sombre history, and that’s likely why I connect with places where humour and lightness of being have helped people caught in conflict—those who are displaced or oppressed.
For instance, the title of my first film, Chronicle of a Disappearance, is politically quite telling, but the film isn’t sombre. The scenes are burlesque, and humour is woven into the stories. The film is set in Nazareth, where the process of ghettoisation was neither rapid nor obvious. The city retains its small-town-on-the-hill feeling, with tenderness among its people. However, psychological occupation and economic oppression are present, as the Israeli government gradually forces Palestinians to leave due to harsh living conditions, effectively creating a ghetto-like environment. But despair gives rise to humour: people sit on their doorsteps or in shops doing nothing, and they begin to joke about their desperate situation.
This kind of dark humour isn’t unique to the Nazareth ghetto; it’s a feature of ghettos throughout history, including the Jewish ghettos during the Second World War. Wherever there have been ghettos, there has been dark humour. People often ask me if I use humour as a strategy, but I don’t believe humour can be used strategically—either you see life this way, or you don’t. In my case, the humour likely comes from my upbringing. I grew up in a family that was humorous, cheerful, loving, and tender. Every dinner or lunch was also a storytelling session. So, I believe I am very much a product of my family as well as my surroundings in that regard.
NJ: Portraying life in Palestine and Israel through the lens of humour went against the standard, often clichéd and stereotypical, cinematic representations of the region
and its people. Your first film, Introduction to the End of an Argument—which you co-directed with Jayce Salloum— directly challenged the dominant depictions of Arabs and Palestinians in the Western cinematic imagination, even though the film is quite different from the work you’ve done since.
ES: That film was a kind of aesthetic counter-attack against those cinematic stereotypes and clichés. I started collecting all these films about Arabs, intending to make them even more ridiculous than they already were. Then I met Jayce Salloum, and we somehow combined our efforts—the project was really about striking back at those who misrepresent the Middle East. I felt like I had to get it out of my system. When you watch the film, it’s clear that it has little in common with my other work, but it was something I needed to do to push back against those who use images to further the colonisation of the Middle East and justify wars there. The Americans did this very effectively—just like the Europeans had done before them—portraying Arabs and Palestinians as irresponsible, as terrorists and primitives, to justify their pursuit of riches and oil.
After Introduction, I was offered the chance to make a short film about the Gulf War, called Homage by Assassination. Just for the anecdote, I have to tell you that I didn’t even know what a 35mm camera looked like. The producer wanted the film for theatres, so he insisted on shooting it on 35mm, but I didn’t know anything about cinema, at least not the technical side. The only thing I remembered was that the cinematographer had shown me how to break down shots and taught me some basics. However, I miscalculated the size of the camera. I thought I could just set it up in my apartment and shoot with a 50mm lens, but when the camera arrived, we had to move everything out because the camera itself was nearly a metre long. It was a funny experience but it gave me the opportunity to learn how to break down a shot properly.
NJ: Alongside the shooting of this film, you were also pursuing your knowledge in film—and you’ve described yourself as self-taught. You didn’t attend film school? ES: Homage is interesting because it became the foundation from which I started to realise what kind of cinema I wanted to make later. At that time, I was still very much influenced by other filmmakers. I was imitating, writing a script that imitated the work of Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien because I loved his films so much. But, at that moment, no one believed in me; I hadn’t studied film, I hadn’t yet shown any particular talent, so no one was eager to help me or give me a chance.
I started watching films in a couple of cinemas in New York City, where I was living at the time. I forced myself to watch two or three films a day, but I didn’t really enjoy it at first. I didn’t understand how to watch a film by Jean-Luc Godard, for example—it was an effort for me, and I didn’t get it. The grammar of cinema was something I wasn’t attuned to. My friends were going to NYU, and they’d talk about Wim Wenders and Godard, while I accused those filmmakers of being bourgeois. The truth was that I didn’t fully appreciate good cinema at first because I didn’t comprehend the language of cinema. However, I watched more films and started reading about film theory and books by filmmakers about themselves. It was when I watched Tokyo Story by Yasujirō Ozu hat I began to have faith that I could make films.
There was a strong urge in me, partly driven by my critique of films that misrepresent Palestine—
especially the so-called “liberal Zionist” films, where a Palestinian with blue eyes is portrayed as the “good guy.” I hated those films, but I didn’t know how to critique them in cinematic terms, which drove me to read books on theory and filmmaking. I wanted to establish a verbal language to analyse those films because I felt deeply that they were doing a disservice to my people. It wasn’t just the bad films, but even the mediocre ones, made by people who thought they were good filmmakers, who wanted to make films about Palestine, but they were never made by Palestinians or from a Palestinian perspective.
This frustration accumulated into an energy that fuelled my desire to break cinematic conventions and develop a new film language that fit the daily life of where I grew up. I wanted to convey political content through the everyday, through humour, strict framing—that’s what Chronicle of a Disappearance was about.
There are so many stories connected to that film that still resonate. I produced it myself, even though I didn’t know how to produce or direct. It’s not that I didn’t mess up—I messed up a lot because I didn’t know how to handle money. I wanted to experiment with everything in Chronicle, so I set up scenes that often ended up in the garbage. But trying out all those different approaches is what ultimately shaped the film. Since I was the person in charge, I allowed myself to explore various cinematic possibilities. No one was telling me what to do. Of course, I didn’t earn anything from it; I poured everything I had into the film. I was like a crazed man on a mission to prove a point, and I felt so empowered by it. During post-production, I couldn’t even afford to take the metro—I walked everywhere to save money. I even asked my brother, who lives in Treviso, Italy, to pay for my flight to the Venice International Film Festival—back then, they didn’t cover your flight, just three nights in a hotel. But it all paid off when the film won the prize for Best First Film at Venice.
NJ: You produced your next film, Divine Intervention, with Humbert Balsan.
ES: Humbert Balsan was such a great producer, and I’ve dedicated my films to him several times. There are people who are like pillars in my life, like guardian angels. I never forget that without them, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Humbert was one of those people— an amazing producer and a true cinema fighter. He supported me like a cheerleader, helping me make the film exactly the way I wanted. I was so spoiled by his dedication.
Even after the success of Chronicle of a Disappearance, I struggled for a long time to make Divine Intervention. I couldn’t find a producer—they either thought it was too similar to Chronicle, or they felt it was completely different. Humbert and I had a mutual friend who kept telling him about this crazy script I had that nobody wanted to produce. She tried repeatedly to get him to read it but he avoided her because he was busy with other films and didn’t really want to meet me. Eventually, one day, he agreed to meet me, but only to get it over with. He scheduled the meeting at an impossible time, but I showed up anyway with a VHS of Chronicle. He said he’d watch just five minutes of the film, but when he did, he went berserk. He found local distributors and demanded a 35mm projection. After the screening, he called me and insisted that we meet immediately. However, I wasn’t in Paris at the time—I was in Jaffa, editing Cyber Palestine. I apologised, saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m in Jaffa, editing my short film.’ But that didn’t stop him—the very next day,
Tribute to Elia Suleiman / 30th Sarajevo Film Festival
DIVINE INTERVENTION
DIVINE INTERVENTION
he flew out, invited me to lunch at a fish restaurant, and asked me to sign a napkin. It was such a lovely journey to know him and work with him.
NJ: What were the reactions to such an unusual and unexpected film as Divine Intervention?
ES: When I made Chronicle, critics in the Arab press harshly criticised the film, accusing me of being a traitor and a collaborator with Israel. One reason is the last scene of the film, where we see my parents falling asleep as the Israeli national anthem is playing on the television, announcing the end of the broadcast day. The critics took it as a surrender to Israel. Another reason was its humour, which was at that moment unprecedented in cinematic representations of Palestine. And lastly, because I received funding from the national cinema institute of Israel. However, I did so after careful consultation—we, Palestinians of the 1948 residence of what is now called Israel, pay taxes in Israel, but we rarely benefit from their cultural institutions, so I felt I deserved the funding. I submitted the script anonymously to their national film fund, and while the jury approved it, the institution initially said no. I had to hire a lawyer to push the case forward, and they eventually agreed to give me $100,000 out of the $300,000 that is normally given for a feature script. Eventually, they agreed to give the whole amount.
The film was generally well received by left-leaning critics in Israel, though some reviews took issue with how I mock the police and the army. One person from the Israeli film institution told me that if I had shown a soldier breaking the hands of a Palestinian, it would have been fine, but making them look like cartoons was insulting. On the Arab side, people were shocked by the film’s humour. The sentimentalists who wanted Palestinians to be portrayed solely as victims were disappointed because I refused to offer any victimisation.
The script for Chronicle was initially rejected by the left-leaning producers I approached in France. At that time, I was living in New York City, so they accused me of being this Americanised person who was not aware of the realities of Palestine. They wondered why there are no soldiers beating and shooting Palestinians in the script. These producers were particularly patronising. However, after the film was completed, it received positive critical reviews in France.
When I made Divine Intervention, things changed. Those Arab critics who accused me of being a traitor after Chronicle now hailed me as a hero!
NJ: But your next film was another reversal, wasn’t it?
ES: Yes. The Time That Remains was quite different from my previous experiences. Basically, it had an epic structure to it, with different historic periods, initiating with the Nakba in 1948, and ending with the last part in modern times. Making that film was a challenging experience, primarily in the first segment, where I had to employ a more conventional narrative structure. As the film progresses, the narrative gradually takes on a cinematic style that is closer to what I usually work with.
For the first part of the film—during the Nakba—I had asked my father to write down his experience of being a resistance fighter at the time. I translated his notes to cinema in literal terms, to such an extent that I filmed the scenes where the actual events took place. I have to say that experience of making The Time That Remains was often difficult to go through, even to the extent that it inflicted painful emotions due to the very personal storytelling I committed myself to, which continued with the narrative of my mother falling sick and later passing away. After the film premiered at the Festival de Cannes, I avoided watching it for many years, until a few months ago when the film screened at the Lisboa Film Festival. I didn’t expect that I would sit through the film but I did, and I made peace with it. As it turns out, the film has remaining timely over all these years, due to what has been happening to Palestine, and especially the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Tribute to Elia Suleiman / 30th Sarajevo
THE TIME THAT REMAINS
But after The Time That Remains, I promised myself I would never again expose myself to such a personal voyage. I wanted my next film to be burlesque and humorous in the extreme. I could feel that shift even during the making of It Must Be Heaven. I was having a lot of pleasure during the filming, with a sense of lightness and humour throughout the process. It’s the same kind of humour as in my previous films, just taken further. My character’s representation also shifted. In the past, I was stone-faced, just observing and guiding the spectator toward what I was watching. But, in It Must Be Heaven, I became more of a character taking in the realities I was observing. I would say my character here took on more clownish behaviour in reacting to this reality.
In fact, I think I had already sensed this shift awhile before making the film. That was when I shot Diary of a Beginner in Cuba—that film allowed me to experiment with the shift that my character was going through, as well as with my camera and what it was filming. Making short films such as Diary, with a small budget and few shooting days—in that case, three or four—gives you the liberty and freedom to do such experimentation. Diary was a sort of dress rehearsal for how my character should act in It Must Be Heaven
NJ: Could you tell us more about your approach to editing? You often work with the same editor, Véronique Lange, and your films have a distinct rhythm and specific editing patterns. Is editing where everything finally comes together, or is it already defined in the screenplay?
ES: Well, you could say both are true. I write with a very precise idea of what I want to do, so, in a sense, I’m already editing when I write the script. I even visualise the edits on the wall as I write. However, things don’t always stay the same when you start shooting. I never follow the script exactly; I don’t even carry it with me on set. I prefer to be inspired in the moment, so I usually leave the script with an assistant and only refer to it if I’m completely lost, especially if there’s a complex scene involving many people.
I don’t like to treat the script as a bible because I want to keep the creative energy alive on set. The same goes for the editing process. It’s not a matter of just sitting back and assembling the film. You have to re-engage with the material. The difference between shooting and editing is that editing allows for a more relaxed pace. You can take breaks, have an espresso, and think things through without the pressure that comes with shooting.
Véronique and I have a great working relationship. She starts working on the footage in the early hours, and I come in later to review what she’s assembled. Of course, there are always adjustments to be made, but she takes the lead in the beginning. As the film starts to take shape and becomes more intense, I get more involved, especially when it comes to fine-tuning the details, like deciding if a cut should be three frames forward or back. We have an understanding that we won’t stop until everything feels perfect. Véronique isn’t the type of editor who’ll say, ‘It’s fine as it is,’ or ‘That’s enough.’ She knows there’s a specific, single spot where an edit belongs, and we’ll keep searching until we find it. She’s very calm and serene, which is important to me because I don’t like working with nervous people. I also don’t like working with people who don’t enjoy what they’re doing.
On set, I prefer a quiet, focused atmosphere. Everyone speaks softly through microphones, and I avoid unnecessary noise. Making a film is like occupying a space—you’re stopping traffic, interrupting people’s routines, and making a mess in the streets. I don’t like doing that with a forceful, authoritarian attitude. During
the first production meeting, I make it clear that if you’re not enjoying the process, you shouldn’t be here. Go find something that brings you pleasure.
Working on It Must Be Heaven in France was euphoric. The French have an incredible love for cinema—even the crew members distributing water are cinephiles, they know and appreciate cinema, and they get a kick out of it. This was different from my experience in Canada, where unions and strict rules can sometimes overshadow the creative process. In France, even during lunchtime, there’s a sense of joy. It’s the union law that wine must be served at lunch, and what a blessing that is! I first experienced this when we shot the ninja sequence in Divine Intervention in France, and I saw beautiful tents and a chef preparing lunch, complete with wine.
NJ: The scenes in Paris, especially when the city is empty, are quite striking.
ES: The idea of emptying the centre of Paris was to create an illusion of militaristic state of exception. By stripping the city to its bare bones, architectural exposé, we begin to see police chasing persons of colour, homeless people queueing, and the tanks parading and thus imposing racism, inequality, police violence, military violence—all of which can be summed up in one word: globalisation, or what I call the Palestinisation of the world. I had written a script long before the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, fearing and feeling that the violence that is mainly created by superpowers but that occurs elsewhere will boomerang and come to the hearts of these powerful countries. Of course, as in all my films, the serious topics in It Must Be Heaven are treated by employing burlesque and humour. Naturally, the more despairing a situation becomes, the more humorously it is expressed.
NJ: We mentioned in passing your short film Cyber Palestine, which I find very interesting for several reasons. It was funded by the Bethlehem 2000 initiative—could you tell us more about it?
ES: Bethlehem 2000 was an initiative of the Palestinian Authority. They established a ministry dedicated to renovating cities across the West Bank, securing funds for various projects. As part of the initiative, they asked several filmmakers, including me, to create short films to be screened in the centre of Bethlehem during the New Year celebrations.
They specifically requested a religious-themed short film, to celebrate Christmas and New Year. In my film, the archangel Gabriel appears to Joseph and Mary, who at the moment live in Gaza, and instructs them to go to Bethlehem, where Mary is supposed to give birth to Jesus; on their way from Gaza they get stuck at the Israeli checkpoint. The minister in charge of Bethlehem 2000 told me, ‘This isn’t a religious film; it’s political.’ I responded, ‘Yes, but it’s about Joseph and Mary—how much more religious can it get?’ He laughed and said, ‘I like it anyway.’ So, they went ahead and screened it on the square.
I wrote the script on the plane heading back home from Paris and got in touch with my friend Avi Kleinberger, who was the line producer of a few of my films. We shot Cyber Palestine in a couple of days. One of the two days we shot in Gaza. I secretly shot a scene at an actual checkpoint on entering Gaza, filming the legs of the cheap Palestinian labour—so many of them waiting to enter Israel to work there. It was a horrific thing to witness: hundreds, if not thousands of people crammed in endless lines.
Here, it is interesting to note that Cyber Palestine is another of my short films that served as a place for
to Elia Suleiman / 30th Sarajevo Film Festival
experimentation and a dress rehearsal, in this case for some scenes in Divine Intervention—mainly, the use of slow motion to create sensationalist effects, which I later used in Divine Intervention When the woman crosses the checkpoint as the soldiers point their guns at her, it was shot in slow-motion, almost appropriating the visual codes of commercials.
NJ: The sound in your films is as important as the visual component, and you give great significance to silence as a kind of atypical sound. Can you say a bit more here about how you use music as a cinematic element?
ES: I almost never use composed soundtracks. I rely on existing music and sounds. However, I use them as a parallel narrative to the visual representation, not as the background. I use existing music because I believe music should say something that runs parallel to the narrative of the film. Sound is equally important to the visual in so many ways—sound and music both.
I use music ranging from kitschy Arabic pop to classical Arabic compositions, the latter being a major influence of my father, who opened my eyes and ears to the richness of classical Arabic music. In a later phase, it was Yasmine Hamdan, my partner, who took on the role of music consultant. Yasmine is a composer and singer with an incredible knowledge of classical Arabic music, and Occidental music as well. She chose a few of the tracks in my last two films. I also chose a few tracks from her albums. During the editing phases, I would describe the ambient or mood I was looking for, and she would create a file of options. We’d send her the scene, and she’d test the music against it.
NJ: Could you share with us more about your current project?
ES: Everything has been suspended since October 7. Here and there I make attempts at writing, but I haven’t quite captured the ambience of this moment we are living. I make a film when I feel it has become necessary to make a film. I try to be alert to what is happening around me, I try to take in the ambience. At the moment, I am doing that sporadically but not consistently. I have a feeling that what happened before the latest genocide in Palestine and what happens after it will be two different realities, as when we imagine what the world was before the Second World War and after.
One sign that gives me hope for writing the script for my next film is that I have the opening scene. It will be more hopeful when I have the end scene. After that, the rest of the script starts filling in.
NJ: Let’s end this conversation not with a period, but with a comma, as it were, as we will soon meet in Sarajevo, where we’ll continue it during a masterclass with an audience who will watch your films and undoubtedly have many questions for you.
ES: The Sarajevo Film Festival can’t come soon enough.
Nebojša Jovanović is an assistant professor in the Production Department of the University of Sarajevo—Academy of Performing Arts. He edited monograph Hajrudin Krvavac (2019), the volume on one of the most popular Yugoslav directors of the socialist era. His essays on film theory and history have been published in edited volumes and film magazines and journals. Since 2019, he has been the project manager of Talents Sarajevo, the talent development programme of the Sarajevo Film Festival.
