Palestinian comic visionary Elia Suleiman is at the height of his powers with this series of deadpan, interconnected, absurdist vignettes about Palestinian life on either side of an Israeli military checkpoint. Mutely following the travails of two lovers — one who lives in Nazareth, the other in Ramallah — as they navigate the wall between them, Divine Intervention is surreal, satirical, and biting in its political criticism without ever surrendering its poetry. It’s both sad in its vision of the world but also deeply warm in its humour.
Elia Suleiman is the greatest-living filmmaker to carry the mantle of Jacques Tati. All but forgotten from the mainstream filmgoing consciousness, Tati’s innovations with form and tone have been repurposed by filmmakers as varied as Roy Andersson, Aki Kaurismäki, Ulrich Seidl, and, perhaps most of all, Wes Anderson. But Suleiman’s method of feeding the Tati-esque through the prism of Palestinian experience creates something completely new that walks an astonishing poetic line between melancholy and absurdity. And WOW what an amazing soundtrack!
Community Partner
Elia Suleiman, Manal Khader, Nayef Fahoum Daher
France/Palestine
2002
In English, Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Producer
Humbert Balsan
Screenwriter
Elia Suleiman
Cinematography
Marc-André Batigne
Editor
Véronique Lange
Elia Suleiman
Elia Suleiman is a Palestinian filmmaker born 1960 in Nazareth. He moved to New York in 1981, where he frequently served as a guest lecturer at universities, art institutions, and museums. He has received grants from ITVS and the Ford Foundation, and was the recipient of the Rockefeller Award for work achievement. In 1994, he moved to Jerusalem, where the European Commission asked him to initiate a Film and Media department at Bir Zeit University. His first feature, Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996), won the Best First Film Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Filmography: Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996); The Time That Remains (2009); It Must Be Heaven (2019)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
The Blue Trail
77-year-old Tereza makes a break for the Brazilian jungle in this trippy septuagenarian fantasy, the latest from Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro is a quirky picaresque, lushly photographed and filled with mordant humour.
Follies
After two kids and 16 years of marriage, François and Julie decide to open up their relationship in a bid to rekindle their dwindling sex life. A painfully hilarious and brutally honest depiction of love, sex, and intimacy in the age of the internet.
Castration Movie Anthology 1: Traps
Louise Weard's underground movie is a talk-a-thon in two chapters and four hours: a sex worker contemplates having her testicles removed, and a movie production assistant pitches himself right out of a job, and other misadventures in Vancouver life.
Montreal, ma belle
In this Valentine to discovering love later in life, the ever-elegant Joan Chen plays Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother in Montreal whose world is turned upside down when she meets and falls in love with a young Quebecoise.