Mousem Al Zaytoun
Palestine / USA,
2003, 94 min
Shown in 2003
CREDITS
- dir
-
Hanna Elias
- prod
-
Kamran Elahian
- scr
-
Hanna Elias
- cam
-
Ofer Harari
- editor
-
Sabine Jamil
- mus
-
Mark Adler
- cast
-
Muhamad Bacri, Raeda Adon, Taher Najeb, Mazen Saade
- source
-
Jarmaq Films, 3930 Cody Rd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403. FAX: 818-995-8221. EMAIL: hannalatif@hotmail.com.
- premiere
-
World Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Skyy Prize contender. Hanna Elias, Kamran Elahian in person.
OTHER
Palestinian Hanna Elias’s first feature snares its intimate cast of characters in a tightening web of emotional obligations—to family, self and country—with a classical economy of storytelling and an eye for dramatic conflict. Mazen has just been released from an Israeli prison for setting fire to an Israeli settlement site, which, if finished, would have demolished his village’s all-important olive groves. His younger brother Taher has fallen in love with the beautiful Raeda—a love kept secret because, by tradition, older brother Mazen must marry first. And Raeda’s father Muhamad, the patriarch of the groves, is dying, and seeing in Mazen’s sacrifice to save the olives a protector for the groves once he’s gone, pushes Raeda to marry Mazen. Meanwhile, there’s Raeda, torn between these two worthy brothers, but only in love with one of them. How does one choose between passion, respect and obligation? The Olive Harvest shows how, for Palestinians, even a love story is inseparable from the struggle over the land. The olive trees, nurtured by generations, are a literal statement that Palestinians have roots in Palestine. Israelis are seen as the destructive intruders. The Olive Harvest is an unparalleled opportunity to see an impassioned Palestinian point of view to which Americans are rarely exposed.
—Steve Mockus
FACTOID #25
The San Francisco International showed Lina Wertm’ller’s first film, The Lizards, in 1963. A favorite of Bay Area audiences, her features All Screwed Up and The Seduction of Mimi had their U.S. premieres at the SFIFF in 1972 and 1974.
