By Hadani Ditmars

 

LONDON, 25 Oct. - (ANA) - Veteran filmmaker Annemarie Jacir's latest offering, Palestine 36, is a cinematic tour de force — an epic historical drama that serves as a timely antidote to Hollywood's Exodus.

 

With this third feature film, the acclaimed Palestinian writer-director behind When I Saw You and Wajib delivers Palestine's official entry for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards, reaffirming her status as one of the region's most vital cinematic voices.

 

Set during the 1936 Palestinian uprising against British colonial rule, the film was shot during the post-October 7 violence and the Iran-Israel conflict.

 

The film seems incredibly timely, both in light of Israel's two-year genocide and the bizarre neo-colonial Trump-penned plan to have Tony Blair as the de facto "king" or viceroy of Gaza.

 

"Yes, we are still in a colonial moment," Annemarie tells The New Arab. "We have never been out of the colonial moment, unfortunately. People always use this term 'postcolonialism', and it mystifies me. I wish there were postcolonialism, but no, we’re still in that moment."

 

 

The powerful historical drama follows the very personal stories of Palestinians swept up in the general strike and resistance against British colonialism, and the film — shot on location in Palestine and Jordan — includes rare archival footage.

 

The stellar international cast features Hiam Abbas (Succession), Jeremy Irons (Reversal of Fortune), and Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones), alongside a powerful lineup of Palestinian talent.

 

Saleh Bakri delivers a moving performance as a disillusioned Jaffa dockworker who joins the rebel movement, while Karim Daoud Anaya portrays Yusuf, a farmer from a village near Jerusalem who works in the city by day and returns to his ancestral land by night to defend it from confiscation by Zionist settlers. Making her acting debut, Yafa Bakri plays a young woman who hides an heirloom gun, determined to protect her family from British military raids.

 

 

 

 

Speaking more about her initial inspiration for making the film, Annemarie explains, "I'm a history nerd and I'm just fascinated by the Palestinian uprising of 1936. I think it's the critical moment in our history that is almost never talked about because we always start with the Nakba for some reason. It's really important that we talk about this moment more than a decade before 1948 because, of course, it sets the stage for everything that comes after and the loss of Palestine."

 

The British, she says, "were doing what the Israelis are doing now." Not only acts of torture and waterboarding, she points out, but also forms of collective punishment like blowing up people’s houses, sending people to detention camps and even building a wall.

 

The mastermind of the wall was a man named Charles Tagart, and Annemarie created a character with the same name, played by Liam Cunningham.

 

In one scene, he outlines the proposal for the wall — how long it will be, how high, and how far it will reach. Its main function, Annemarie says, was to separate Palestine from Lebanon and Syria.

 

"There's a lot of pride in the fact that we had arguably the longest and largest revolt and strike (from April to October) against British colonialism at that time," Annemarie recounts.

 

"It was a general strike. Everybody was involved, from port workers to railroad workers to newspapers."

 

 

 

 

It's interesting to note that in the film, there is no contact between the Palestinians and the Jewish settlers — except for a violent confrontation when one of the Palestinian characters is shot.

 

Rather, the interaction is all between the Palestinians and the British. A key line by Captain Wingate, who says, "The Zionists provide the key to preserving the empire," underlines the idea that both peoples were tools of empire. 

 

Annemarie tells The New Arab that this was a deliberate choice.

 

"I was really interested in the British/Palestinian story," she says. "It was important for me to show the Jewish refugees were coming here for safety, as so many other communities had — like the Armenians and the Bosnians (in the 19th Century). I wanted to point the finger at fascism in Europe, showing that Jews were fleeing from this awful thing, and it had nothing to do with us."

 

When asked why so many historians – Palestinian, Israeli and British — are obsessed with the 1936 revolt, she replies, "I think that's what attracts me about the period as well, because there was a lot of possibility. Things could be really different today had it gone another way."

 

 

 

 

To say that filming after October 7, 2023, was difficult was an understatement. The production had to stop four times as Israel's genocide raged on in Gaza, and the situation in Palestine deteriorated.

 

Producers, of course, with financial obligations needed to deliver the film, so proposals came in to film in other places, including Malta, Greece, Morocco, and Cyprus.

 

But Annemarie kept refusing. "I was very stubborn about it," she shares. "I just could not bear the fact that we had to shift so many scenes out of here. It was devastating because the film was so much about the land, I couldn't conceive of filming scenes set in Jerusalem or Jaffa somewhere else and pretending it was real."

 

Despite financial loss and a reduction of the production crew, the Palestinian filmmaker remained firm in her convictions to film as much as possible in Palestine.

 

Additionally, some actors were denied entry by the Israelis, and the agents of international stars were reluctant to let them travel as the situation worsened.

 

"We filmed in Jordan and then we came back to Palestine in November," Annemarie recounts.

 

"But we would have to stop production when there were missiles or alarms, and we had to go running into the shelters. Getting insurance was a nightmare. But even when we had insurance, it wasn't safe."

 

The crew restored a whole village near Nablus before shooting the main village scenes, but had to go elsewhere because armed settlers overran the whole area.

 

So, a lot of the village scenes were filmed in the north of Jordan, where it’s very green and close to the Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian borders.

 

"They feel like very fake borders in fact because the land is the same land," Annemarie tells The New Arab.

 

The scenes shot in Palestine included those in Jerusalem and Jaffa, as well as some interiors in Bethlehem. The exterior shots of the main characters’ (Khouloud and Amir’s) house in Jerusalem were shot in Katamon (once a predominantly Palestinian Christian area west of Jerusalem that was ethnically cleansed in 1948).

 

The production was harrowing for most of the cast and crew — many of whom had family in Gaza. Many young, male crew members living in the West Bank stayed on in Jordan for fear of being detained by Israeli occupation forces upon their return.

 

"Emotionally, it was really hard," says Annemarie, "and I think I’m still not able to process all of it because part of me just had to put blinders on. I couldn't look at social media, or I wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed in the morning.

 

"The scene in the village – without spoiling the ending – with the British army, it was very real for the cast. The woman who played Afra’s mother, Yafa Bakri, this was her first acting role. But she was not acting. She was so emotionally plugged into what was happening around us, it was very hard for her, and she was really distraught, and at one point, she actually passed out on set."

 

On the other hand, making the film was also key to Annemarie’s emotional survival.

 

"All of us just had to keep going because we felt so hopeless, and making the film was something concrete we could do. It was a way of maintaining our presence – demonstrating the fact that we are here and we do things with love, and we will not disappear."

 

Palestine 36 will be screened at the 44th Vancouver International Film Festival on 9 October at 21:00 and 10 October at 11:45, and also at this year’s BFI London Film Festival on 17 October 2025 at 18:10 and on 19 October 2025 at 17:00.    - (ANA) -

 

 

 

 

Hadani Ditmars is the author of Dancing in the No Fly Zone and has been writing from and about the MENA since 1992. Her next book, Between Two Rivers, is a travelogue of ancient sites and modern culture in Iraq. www.hadaniditmars.com

 

AB/ANA/25 October 2025 - - -