FIPRESCI Jury Award-winning “A Gaza Weekend” made a splash at Toronto International Film Festival last week. Public and press alike flocked towards theaters for this film's premiere weekend; each screening was packed. The film's release could not have been more timely. Written during the swine flu and released after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, British-Palestinian Basil Khalil pokes fun at plague paranoia in his narrative feature debut. In this punchy family-friendly comedy of the Gaza Strip, any and all traditional power hierarchies are out the window for the sake of survival.
A Gaza Weekend is screening at Red Sea International Film Festival
Like many films about Palestine, “A Gaza Weekend” follows the trajectory of a refugee couple – though this time, they're from Israel. Englishman Michael (Stephen Mangan) and his Israeli partner Keren (Mouna Hawa) are desperate to leave the country after the outbreak of a new deadly ARS virus. They hear that the Gaza Strip is the “safest place in the world” – ironically, because of its strict borders – so they employ smugglers to help them get through. Once in Palestine, they find that they must depend upon some hustlers following the scent of the money: the dedicated Waleed (Adam Bakri), his clever wife Nuhad (Maria Zreik), and his good-humored friend Emad (Loai Nofi). Their get-rich-quick scheme soon gets out of hand, however, when they find out that Hamas is on their tail. The quirky trio finds then that they have to resort to anything and everything to transport the couple to Egypt. Armed with only their wits and a box of snuff, the motley crew dodges ambitious police officers, gossipy neighbors, and heartstopping checkpoints before they finally reach the Egyptian border.
Khalil's feature is an exhilarating intervention to the typical Euro-American-approved Palestinian film. Just from Sundance earlier this year, the two documentaries about Palestine revolved around resilience (“The Devil's Drivers”) and tragedy (“Tantura”). Narrative features in other festivals — typically from the likes of auteurs such as Elia Suleiman (“It Must be Heaven”) and Rashid Masharawi (“Attente”) — ponder upon a Camus-esque sense of the Absurd. Khalil's premiere at TIFF, however, usurps these more serious selections entirely. In his topsy-turvy world, everything is laugh-out-loud funny. The pandemic raging in the background, for example, inflicts more amusement than fear. Anxiety be damned, Waleed and Emad seem to say; the pandemic is just another opportunity to sell blue-stained bra cups as overpriced masks. The siren song of corruption is no big deal either, so long one knows how to move with the music. With each trivial bribe, Waleed, Emad, and Nuhad gracefully navigate the labyrinthine parody of contemporary Palestinian society.
Most notably, Khalil's joyful introduction to the region invites us to laugh with Waleed and company, rather than at them. He does so by shifting the narrative from Michael and Keren's one-dimensional snobbery to a full-bodied examination of Palestine. Waleed, Nuhad, and Emad are notable not just for their troubles, but for their street smarts; they are generously written to dance to the bouncy Arabic music than to sob. Of the trio, Maria Zreik stands out in particular. Occupying the roles of a loyal wife, concerned mother, and keen strategist at once, Zreik develops a nuanced and likeable character on-screen. Her straightforward subtleties offsets the racialized caricatures often cited by Michael and Keren, winning over the audience to the Palestinian point-of-view. In the presence of Maria Zreik's Nuhad, ignorance is not only dismissable, but silly.
And silly it is, this whole idea of a weekend vacation amid a pandemic. But that is all part of the joke. Basil Khalil's tight scriptwriting and seamless direction has branded himself as a filmmaker to watch. With more work like this in the future, he is sure to join the pantheon of Palestinian cinematic greats.
