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!
Elia Suleiman, Manal Khader, Nayef Fahoum Daher
France/Palestine
2002
In English, Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles
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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)
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