Palestine’s Farah Nabulsi has made waves with her emotionally charged filmmaking. Her latest work, The Teacher, is already garnering international acclaim, ahead of its release on Netflix MENA (Middle East and North Africa) in October.
Photo: Courtesy of Farah Nabulsi
Since leaving corporate life for the world of cinema in 2016, Farah Nabulsi’s journey as a filmmaker has been marked by her commitment to shedding light on the Palestinian experience and the challenges faced by those living under occupation. Through her lens, she captures the resilience, hope, and everyday struggles of her characters, offering a poignant and nuanced portrayal of their plight.
Inspired by true events and the larger political and humanitarian landscape, The Teacher follows the story of Basem, an educator played by Saleh Bakri, who struggles to navigate the complexities of his involvement in political resistance, his dedication to supporting troubled student Adam (Muhammed Abed El Rahman), and his relationship with British volunteer worker Lisa (Imogen Poots). Nabulsi’s deft direction and the powerful performances of her cast have already earned the film a slew of accolades for its authenticity and emotional depth.
Photo: Courtesy of Farah Nabulsi
With The Teacher set to reach global audiences through Netflix MENA next month, Nabulsi’s creative voice grows louder and more influential. Despite being born, raised, and educated in the UK, her heritage is distinctly Palestinian. During one of her trips revisiting these roots, she was struck by the story of Israeli occupation soldier Gilad Shalit, who was captured in 2006 by freedom fighters and, in 2011, was released in exchange for over 1 000 Palestinian political prisoners. “I remember thinking at the time: ‘Wow! – one person for over 1 000 others. What a crazy imbalance in value for human life,’” Nabulsi recalls. “I’ve had numerous conversations with Palestinians who have experienced first-hand many of the absurd and cruel things that also inspired the screenplay and take place in the film,” she says. Some of these incidents she has witnessed herself, including home demolitions, child prisoners in military detention, and Israeli settler vandalism and violence. “The story is the accumulation of all those various real-life events that have taken place in militarily occupied and colonized Palestine, coupled with my visual and verbal imagination as a filmmaker. It’s a deeply human story that speaks to my identity.”
Photo: Courtesy of Farah Nabulsi
With no formal education in the field, it was a complete shock to Nabulsi when her first foray into filmmaking, The Present, won a Bafta and went on to be nominated for an Academy Award. “It was incredible, but I was very much learning on the job. I think it was Stanley Kubrick who said, ‘the best education in film is to make one,’ and I completely agree with that.” The Teacher, her debut full feature-length, was an intense continuation of this hands-on pursuit. If making The Present was like earning an undergraduate degree in filmmaking, she says The Teacher was her master’s. “This evolution applied not just from a technical perspective, but also from a creative and artistic standpoint. Leading and working with a much larger team of people on a much more challenging story was a significant step up.”
Photo: Courtesy of Farah Nabulsi
Having written the film over four years ago, shooting took place in 2022 in the occupied West Bank. This posed significant challenges, especially in the Nablus area, which was grappling with a more severe socio-political climate compared to when she did The Present in the Bethlehem region. The heightened tensions and complicated existence under occupation introduced unique obstacles that Nabulsi had to navigate throughout the production process, adding an extra layer of difficulty to an already demanding endeavor. Other than the usual practical and logistical issues of independent cinema – tight budgets, locations falling through, time restrictions, and so on – when shooting in the West Bank, “you also have ongoing settler colonization, apartheid, and military occupation to deal with, like random flying checkpoints being set up by the Israeli military or roads being outright closed, which is very frustrating in the filmmaking process and certainly happened and caused delays,” she explains.
On a personal level, Nabulsi is transparent about the mental and emotional toll of the project too. “During the start of our shooting period, illegal Israeli settlers were torching olive trees in the village of Burin, where our story is literally set, which is something that also takes place in the story itself,” she says. Also featured in the narrative is a scene drawing from the moment when, heading to set in the early hours of the morning, Nabulsi encountered a couple and their six young children standing in front of the rubble of their demolished home.
With her craft serving as her platform for self-expression, cultural preservation and resistance, the filmmaker shares insights about her people and their aspirations for freedom as ongoing crimes against humanity unfold before our very eyes. By putting forward a different and more intimate perspective, she aims to encourage international audiences to overcome misconceptions and cultural and geographical divides. “I truly hope the film also offers audiences a deeper understanding of the painful lived Palestinian experience; a more human context that is sadly often missing from the discourse. Through cinema, we can articulate our calls for justice and equality on a world stage, potentially driving meaningful change and fostering solidarity across borders.”
The Teacher will be releasing on Netflix in the Middle East and North Africa on October 1, 2024
Originally published in the September 2024 issue of Vogue Arabia
