The first full-length film to be shot within the ‘Green Line’ of the occupied territories, the film blends both documentary and narrative elements in order to craft portraits of two very different women: Farah Hatoum, a 50-year-old widow living in the city of Nazareth, and Sahar Khalifeh, a divorcee living with her daughter in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“We can only reach the truth by denouncing the logic and the systems that transform us into potential tormentors and victims. That is how I decided to make a film for - and not about - the women of Palestine, and through them, a film for Palestine. In Fertile Memory, Palestine - its history, its reality, its future, and its contradictions - appear through the portraits of two women, who are almost marginal in the eyes of society, a widow and a working woman. They become the archetype of their people’s experiences. Here was how a subdued history oppresses half of its population. Fertile Memory was for me the vision of the present towards the past for a better future. I tried to push the real scenes from daily life towards fictionality, by exploring the women’s external and internal worlds. I had to suppress the boundaries between reality and fiction, document and narration. Is not Palestine the essence of the mythical country, in spite of its reality?” (Michel Khleifi)

For a long time, the original inhabitants of the Galilean village of Ma’aloul, destroyed by Israel after the 1948 War, were only allowed to visit their old village once a year, on Israel’s Day of Independence. The film follows them on that day and reveals a world of painful memories and the villagers’ profound determination to cling to their ancestral land. Village elders recall the destruction of both their property and harmonious way of life, as youngsters scramble to savour and absorb their forbidden heritage in a single, precious day. lntercut with these scenes, a teacher in a Palestinian classroom explains to his teenage students the history of Palestine, the Holocaust and the creation of Israel.

The first Palestinian film to appear at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the 1987 International Critics’ Prize, was Wedding in Galilee. It tells the story of Abu Adil, the mayor of a Galilean village, who is determined to celebrate his son’s wedding with all the traditional Palestinian fanfare. The village is under curfew imposed by the Israeli military, which means that Abu Adil also must invite the military governor...

“For Wedding in Galilee, the idea came to me through the story of a quack doctor who was faced with a newly wed couple unable to make love on their wedding night, creating unbearable tension in a village. From this idea, I wrote a modern tragedy in which two ‘gods’ confront each other, representing two systems, military and modern, one of the Israeli military governor and the other of the patriarchal and archaic authority of the Palestinian Mukhtar, or mayor of the village. As each tries to pull destiny his way, it is the fate of the people of the village that is at stake. The question is: who will win? In this film, for which I also wrote the script, I wanted to erase the boundaries between fiction and reality. The characters came from my imagination but they were played by non-professionals who had been chosen for their fictive resemblance to the scenario’s characters. Here, I was interested in the theme of joyfulness and resilience under occupation.” (Michel Khleifi )