PALESTINE 36
- Colin Fraser
- Aug 20
- 2 min read
FOUR STARS As Palestinian villages revolt against British colonial rule, Yusuf has to navigate competing interests and escalating unrest.
PERIOD DRAMA PALESTINE Arabic, English #PALESTINE36 Starring Karim Daoud Anaya, Jeremy Irons
Annemarie Jacir’s PALESTINE 36 is an engaging, impeccably produced historical drama about how the future of Palestine was being shaped by decisions that would reverberate for generations. Set during the 1936 Arab Revolt against British rule, it is a difficult, sometimes depressing watch, particularly with the benefit of 90 years of hindsight. Yet Jacir keeps the film compelling without reducing it to a political sermon or reaching for easy moral positions.
Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya), is a young Palestinian whose increasingly politicised journey provides one of the story’s principal threads. Around him, Jacir constructs a much broader picture of life under the British Mandate: Muslim and Christian Palestinians, villagers and urban intellectuals, journalists and rebels, alongside British officials ranging from the apparently well-intentioned to the openly brutal.
The British response to the revolt becomes increasingly punitive, while the influx of European Jews fleeing persecution adds another destabilising element to an already heated situation. What emerges is a portrait of a society caught between colonial administration, competing national aspirations and a British government increasingly unable to, or uninterested in, controlling the violent consequences of its own policies.
That breadth is both the film’s strength and a minor weakness. A lot is packed in to two hours, and there is something admirable about Jacir’s determination to show a persuasive cross-section of people rather than reduce the period to heroes and villains. The performances are excellent across the board, and every character feels real and honestly observed. But casting the net so wide means few of them occupy your heart as much as they could or should. With its succession of storylines and frequent shifts in perspective, PALESTINE 36 can feel more like a compressed miniseries than a two-hour feature.
Yet Jacir compensates with striking visual flourishes and a wonderfully controlled sense of narrative development. There are moments of exposition, necessary given the complexity of the history, but the film rarely feels like a lecture. Indeed, quasi-documentary interludes make good use of colourised archive footage to underscore key moments. And as the film accelerates towards its inevitable conclusion (warning: Chekov’s gun gets a good work out), past and present connect in devastating ways.
PALESTINE 36 is, understandably, not uplifting, not least because we know where these choices led. The film’s greatest achievement is shining light back on this largely ignored chapter of British colonial history, the consequences of which now affect us all. And with knowledge as power, Jacir offers a tiny glimmer of hope.
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