The compelling debut feature from Farah Nabulsi reunites the director with Saleh Bakri, who starred in The Present, her Oscar-nominated and Bafta-winning short film. Bekri here plays Basem, a Palestinian teacher who cares deeply about his students, particularly Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri, brother of the lead) and Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), two teenagers who live in Basem’s village.
When the Israel Defence Forces demolish the boys’ home, an infuriated Yacoub confronts an Israeli settler (Nael Kanj, who is also the film’s production designer) and is shot dead. Basem, a former activist, urges Adam to place his faith in legal process, knowing – despite the best efforts of their campaigning Israeli lawyer (Einat Weizmann) – that the odds are stacked against them.
The teacher has not entirely left his radical past behind. Cryptic messages with a local fruit-seller and a gun hidden in a book introduce a parallel storyline in which an American diplomat (Stanley Townsend) searches for his kidnapped son, Nathaniel. The soldier’s captors are prepared to free him in exchange for the release of 1,200 Palestinian prisoners. The IDF respond with nerve-racking house-to-house searches.
Nabulsi’s script takes cues from the hostage negotiations for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was held by Palestinian militants from June 2006 to October 2011. The British-Palestinian writer-director is more interested in mirrored lives and common trauma than in the fraught politics of the West Bank.
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Carefully calibrated flashbacks show Basem with his now estranged wife and late son. A British volunteer worker (Imogen Poots) offers a chance for a new beginning. The teacher welcomes Adam into his home as a surrogate son but struggles to contain the boy’s righteous indignation.
The parallel father-and-son storylines may feel a bit too tidy, but Nabulsi’s film is powered along by terrific performances and palpable fury.
On Thursday, October 3rd, a special screening of The Teacher at the Light House cinema, in Dublin, will be followed by a Q&A with Farah Nabulsi and Saleh Bakri
