"American and European audiences see Palestinians only in terms of survival and struggle against an occupying force. This is what they see in the news, and this is what they want to see in movies,” he said. “They do not see the Arabs as human beings with a culture.”
When Tawfik Abu Wael first sought funding from European sources, he was told his movie sounded like top-tier material but the panels awarding research and filming grants were obsessed with one detail: “Where was the political conflict? Where was the suffering at the hands of the Israeli people?”
“I do not make films that satisfy systems. There is a colonial system that forces Palestinians into the position of the hopeless victims. I refuse to satisfy their expectations that that is the only reality for Palestinians,” he said. “I now know that if my proposal deals directly with the political conflict it will easily receive funding, but it doesn’t matter, I am more concerned about the portrayal of human behaviour, of love and hunger and thirst.”
With a budget of barely 300,000 euros, Wael began filming in the Palestinian town of Um El-Fahem, where he was born. The town, deep in a majestic valley surrounded by mountains, serves as a dramatic backdrop for the family drama, and not only because of the surreal landscape.
“By chance, it is set in what Israeli soldiers call a UFA — an Urban Fighting Area or a fake Palestinian village — where soldiers train,” he explains. “The land where the camp was built belonged to the inhabitants of Um El-Fahem until 1948 when it was confiscated.”
For a while, the Israeli armed forces used the ‘village’ for training exercises, then they began encroaching on other areas. The towns people revolted in 1998, and several violent clashes later, the Israelis signed an agreement, promising to stop training there. Since then, it has become an arid wasteland. The set proves to be a perfect metaphor for Wael’s story of a patriarch who relocates his family to an isolated area so that he is not compelled to kill his daughter for dishonoring the family. There is no room for forgiveness in the probing eyes of society before whom this family has been shamed. Jamila’s father’s own psyche is steeped in the traditions he must uphold in order to establish his right to exist in that world. But he also knows that being a woman is enough to attract accusations in a world where anger desperately needs an outlet. She has transgressed, tearing him between his traditional values and the love of a father. He decides to forsake society. After relocating the family to the eerie silence of the model village, Abu Shukri gathers wood obsessively to turn into charcoal which he sells to generate an income. He coerces his son, Shukri to join him in the endless quest to burn wood to eke out a living for the family. Then he begins work on a water pipeline, and through it the family’s need for freedom begins to surge, turning into a tide that will crash against the unyielding rock that is Abu Shukri.
Before the film was released, many Israeli distributors balked at the idea of an Arab film. After it was released, Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general raged against his refusal to confront the conflict head-on.
“They ask where are the politics? I chose to focus on the politics of a society of conflict between the family and the society and the conflict within the family. I do not need Israelis to tell the Palestinian story,” he said. “I do not use Israelis as a mirror and see myself reflected there. I am a Palestinian, a Muslim, and then an Israeli citizen. The film is an expression of my existence, and every time I want to express myself, I shouldn’t have to call on images of Israeli checkpoints.”
His references to the political situation are more poetic than those audiences are accustomed to seeing on screen. The Palestinian village that Israeli forces used to practice their tactics constantly anchors the viewer to the conflict.
“The beautiful area bound by mountains, with a strange structure like the Urban Fighting Area in its midst, is like a cancer in society, eating away at it,” he said.
Water and fire continue to serve the art of symbolism through the story. “They burn inside and so they burn the charcoal. I see it as the constant need to burn in order to build, you burn to create, and so you must burn wood to make charcoal. Some people burn the past, others allow the past to burn through them.”
The greatest challenge associated with being a Palestinian filmmaker is, “My target audience can never be Palestinian. There is no Palestinian cinema. There is no system that can fund stories that make up our Palestinian culture,” he said. “There are no films about the friendships between old men, the raging love between teenagers, the father-son struggle. We do not have the luxury of being able to tell these stories because, for obvious reasons, we are consumed with the occupation. But we are also a human society.”
The dearth of Arab films meant Wael had to seek inspiration elsewhere. The director is influenced by François Truffaut, Andreï Tarkovski, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ingmar Bergman and Martin Scorsese. To maximize his exposure to a wide range of artistic possibilities and cinematic techniques, Wael relied on his job at the film archive at the University of Tel Aviv, which gave him access to stacks of films.
As a teenager, he had no sense of career direction. But he knew he loved the art of story-telling through film. Wael started making what are known in cinema-speak as ‘shorts’ at 19 and hasn’t stopped since.
ATASH is a bold gesture toward the modern world. And the International Critics Award at the Cannes Film Festival confirmed that the gesture is a welcome one.