News

Coffee with the Cast and Crew of PALESTINE '36: Memory Is Resistance

One of the film’s key elements is archival material of the colonial administration, from which one of the central ideas emerged.

At the Grand Coffee with… session at the Sarajevo Film Festival, director Annemarie Jacir and actors Liam Cunningham and Yasmine Al Massri spoke about PALESTINE '36. This historical drama is set in 1936, during the Great Palestinian Revolt against British colonial rule. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival before becoming Palestine’s submission for the Academy Awards and making the shortlist for Best International Feature Film.

For Jacir, however, 1936 is not simply a year in history; it is the beginning of a story whose consequences, she says, can still be felt today. “I wanted to speak about that particular moment and about the people who came together around the idea of resistance. But as we were making the film, I realised how much that moment keeps repeating itself. For Palestinians, it is almost a circle we have never been able to escape. That is why it was important to make a film about the past while, at the same time, speaking about the present.”

Jacir, one of the most prominent Palestinian filmmakers, was born in Bethlehem. She established her international reputation with films including Salt of This Sea, When I Saw You, and Wajib. PALESTINE '36 is her fourth feature film and one of her most ambitious works. The film was made under circumstances that changed dramatically during production. “There were moments when we thought this was a completely insane project. But nobody wanted to give up. When the war began, we lost our locations and lost the possibility of filming in the way we had originally envisioned. It took us years to finish the film. But precisely because it was so difficult, we felt an even greater responsibility to complete it.”

One of the film’s key elements is archival material of the colonial administration, which meticulously documented its presence in Palestine, including images of violence. From that thought emerged one of the film’s central ideas: memory as a form of resistance. Jacir believes that Palestinian cinema has a particular responsibility to show the people behind political labels.

British co-producer Cat Villiers pointed out that PALESTINE '36 is also an encounter with British imperialism. “We have to talk about what we did. Wherever the British Empire went, it left deep consequences. Palestine is part of our colonial past that we do not look at nearly enough.”

For Liam Cunningham, who plays British police officer Charles Tegart, that historical connection was particularly powerful. Tegart was a real historical figure, a British counterinsurgency expert who had previously served in India and was brought to Palestine to help suppress the revolt: “My character was a product of an imperial system and a man who believed that an uprising could be crushed using methods that had already been employed elsewhere. Ireland was a kind of laboratory for the British Empire. What they learned and applied there, they later used in Palestine. And that is what struck me so deeply about this story: realising that methods developed over centuries of British colonial history were eventually transferred to Palestine.”

For Yasmine Al Massri, playing Khuloud was much more than an acting assignment. The Lebanese-Palestinian actress, also known for the American television series Quantico, was born in Beirut and comes from a Palestinian refugee family: “The script allowed me to bridge a gap in my own history. We are so much more than people living under siege; we have families, dreams and humour. The film was a way of bringing that back to the screen.”

For her, one of the film’s most important achievements is precisely its portrayal of Palestinians as people whose lives are not defined solely by tragedy. Ultimately, film remains a space where history becomes human experience once again. PALESTINE '36 returns to history, but its questions travel outside that time, preserving memories from being forgotten.