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
Everyone Is Lying to You for Money
In which former OC star Ben McKenzie brushes off his economics degree and digs into the cryptocurrency conundrum. If bitcoin is truly all about transparency, how come no one can explain it?
Erupcja
Charli xcx headlines this indie gem about a young English couple coming unmoored over a few days in Warsaw. Will means to propose. Beth has cold feet -- and an escape hatch she has barely admitted to herself... Think Before Sunrise 2025.
Do You Love Me
Lana Daher's bravura and defiant non-fiction film is a cultural-historical self-portrait of Beirut, comprised entirely of film clips (many of them from dramatic features, but also from news reports, TV and home video) culled from the last 70 years.
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other
This intimate and candid film by a younger husband and wife artist team is a delicate and immensely moving dual portrait of two artists, husband and wife, together and apart, at that point in life when the end casts a shadow over even the sunniest day.
Image: © Manon et Jacob and Final Cut For Real
Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story
Judging by this candid, funny, passionate biographical documentary, it would have been a wild ride to have been Irish novelist Edna O'Brien, or even to have been in her circle of friends and lovers. Well, for an hour and a half we can pretend we were.