Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir, one of the leading filmmakers from the Arab world, has written, directed and produced over sixteen films, with premieres in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, and Toronto. All three of her feature films were selected as Palestine’s Oscar Entry for Foreign Language Film.

With a commitment to teaching, training and hiring locally, Annemarie also curates, actively promoting independent cinema in the region. Founder of Philistine Films, she collaborates regularly as an editor, screenwriter and occasional producer with fellow filmmakers. She teaches screenwriting and works as a freelance editor and consultant.
She is a member of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy and a board member of Palestine Cinema Days. She has taught at Columbia University, Bethlehem University, and Birzeit University, and in refugee camps in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. Annemarie is also a mentor for eQuinoxe Screenwriting Lab and Doha Film Institute.
She is co-founder of the artist-run space Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art & Research in her hometown of Bethlehem, Palestine. She has served as a jury member to numerous festivals, including in Cannes (2018) and Berlinale (2020), and she is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as well as the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

The town of Nazareth, a father with his son, their old car and a few hundred wedding invitations. These are the basic ingredients of director Annemarie Jacir's urban road movie, which feels out the intra-family and inter-generational frictions between her two Palestinian heroes, simultaneously highlighting the multifaceted oppression they experience at every "turn" in their lives. Shadi (Saleh Bakri) travels from Italy—where he now lives—to reunite back home with his father (Mohammad Bakri) so that they can distribute invitations to his sister's wedding to each and every guest, as defined by "wajib" [duty]. Each route in inhospitable Nazareth, each encounter with distant relatives and friends, brings to the surface the ideological and political impasses, the necessary compromises and retreats of each, an amalgam of qualitative contradictions that pushes Shadi's beliefs to their limits. He himself, enjoying the false (?) freedom that Europe offers him, finds that the concept of homeland is accompanied by a feeling that nestles forever inside him and is impossible to get rid of. At the same time, the reconciliation with those he loves must come as both from deep without and bittersweet. Yasir's human gaze combined with her earthly writing, which warmly frames her characters' sense of familiarity, guarantees a solid dialogue drama with unflinching honesty and authentic, essential reflections. Finally, it is worth noting that the leading roles are played by two excellent actors, including Saleh Bakri of the moving Blue Kaftan, who are actually father and son.

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Yannis Kantea-Papadopoulos

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The texts have been produced by the network Filmmakers for Palestine gr.
*We consider Filmmakers to be every person who designs, implements, analyzes and teaches cinema: from editors to assistant directors, from lighting technicians to film critics, from viewers to programmers. A film is created by every gaze that shapes it.

Editing & Translation Team: Sofia Grigoriadou, Christina Phoebe, Maximillien Luc Proctor, Sophia Thomopoulos