Event

Salt of This Sea

A Brooklyn-born Palestinian woman emigrates to Ramallah, determined to fight for the land, money and dignity owed her family in this controversial look at Israeli-Palestinian relations. First feature by a Palestinian woman, poet Anne Marie Jacir, 34, is a confrontational drama that directly addresses the anger and frustrations of the Palestinian people from decades of Israeli authority. (It screened in the prestigious Cannes Un Certain Regard category last year and is just now getting U.S. fest exposure). In the film, Soraya (Suheir Hammad) is a high-strung Palestinian-American from Brooklyn who returns to the chaotic Israeli-occupied Palestinian city of Ramallah to reclaim her family heritage. In the city, she does not approach her new life with a sense of happiness, but rather with impatience and resentment at the current political and cultural situation. When she discovers that the Israeli-owned bank will not refund monies her grandfather left there 60 years ago, she enlists the support of a student -- Emad (Saleh Bakri), and his filmmaker-friend Marwan (Riyad Ideis), both planning to leave for Canada, to rob the bank of the money she says she's owed...plus interest. On the run, the three embark on a dangerous tour of their shared past, which, amid countless obstacles, takes them to her ancestral home now owned by a liberal Israeli.

(In Arabic, Hebrew; English subtitles)