Palestine 36 takes the viewer back to 1936

PALESTINE 36
Directed by Annemarie Jacir
Certificate: 15
☆☆☆☆

GEOPOLITICS does not put the individual front and centre. As the men in suits discuss borders, they look down from afar, physically and psychologically removed from the impact their decisions might have on the people who live in the real world.

This carefully made film takes the viewer to Palestine in 1936 and considers the rebellion against British plans for the area – and we watch as the British draw lines on a map describing how they were going to carve up Palestine. What is striking is how little understanding there was about what this meant physically on the ground. It suggests this blindness was an aspect in creating the awful situation today.

Director Annemarie Jacir creates characters that illustrate how the British Empire treated the people it had subjugated with contempt.

The story tells the story of a Palestinian family living in a small village and those around them who feel they need to defend themselves against the British. We are treated to the political to-ing and fro-ing via the character of a journalist (Yasmine Al Massri) and her political fixer husband (Kamal El Basha) in Jerusalem.

If there is a baddie that encapsulates the colonial mindset, it is the character of maverick British officer Orde Wingate (Robert Aramayo). He is perhaps better known for his work leading a guerilla army in Burma during the Second World War. But before, he was stationed in Palestine and was a Christian Zionist. He believed the return of Jewish people to Palestine was the fulfilment of a 2,000-year exile and was a form of religious destiny. Here, he is portrayed as a vicious man through which the empire’s arrogance is channelled.

Wingate’s characterisation is tempered by colonial secretary Thomas Hopkins (Billy Howle), who can see what is coming and is increasingly disgusted by the British Empire’s behaviour.

He tries to be a voice of reason, tries to help forge a viable, democratic state where both Palestinians and Jewish people can co-exist happily in one nation. But as the film shows – and history so clearly and bloodily states – he failed, and the result is a war that has continued in one form or another to the present day.