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Director:
Hany Abu-Assad
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Produced by:
Augustus Film (in association with the Palestinian Ministry of Culture)
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Production year:
2002
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Language:
In Arabic with English subtitles
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Runtime:
90 min
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35mm prints:
1.85:1 / SR
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SYNOPSIS
Rana is faced with an ultimatum: Choose a husband from an approved list of eligible, respectable men ... or leave East Jerusalem for an extended stay in Egypt. If she hasn't decided on a groom by 4 p.m., she'll have to accompany her father to the airport. What's a girl to do?
Rana takes matters into her own hands and sneaks out at daybreak, searching for her lover Khalil -- a theater director anywhere but in the good graces of Rana's conservative father. But moving through the streets of Jerusalem, across checkpoints to Ramallah, in the alleyways and bazaars in-between, is an emotional struggle in and of itself. With only ten hours to marry, Rana begins to realize the true condition of her people; hemmed in and desperate, she can no more hide her anger than she can hide her doubts about Khalil.
Stuck at a roadblock as Israeli soldiers and stonethrowing Palestinian boys face off, Rana watches the sad farce of routine violence play out. As the children volley Molotov cocktails and the soldiers fire their bullets back, life goes on as normal -- women, couriers, and schoolchildren impassively move along. Overcome with the absurdity of it all, Rana picks up a small stone, weakly tosses it at the soldiers, and runs off. Hardly a partisan of either side, she just wants to get married ... in one of the most volatile places on earth.
It's going to be a long day in Palestine.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
When the abnormalities of barriers and occupation become an everyday reality, normal things like love and marriage turn into fiction. This is life in Palestine right now. I wanted to challenge it through cinema.
Often in film one tries to control reality to create fiction, to make one's own place and time in the present. But reality is not easily controlled, especially in Palestine.
With this film I felt that reality was controlling me. It became a bloody fight between the real and the fictional in a country where the normal appears to be absurd and the absurd appears to be normal. I realized this fight had to be a fair one and that in order to win I had to stay honest.
Because when you are honest and sincere with your fears, with your creativity, with your shortcomings and those of your surroundings, then instinct and spontaneity will not let you down. Although there are no winners, the challenge of this confusing battle can itself turn into an extraordinary experience.
Following a day in the life of a young Palestinian woman turned into a quest for reality and fiction, beauty and consolation, passion and obsession, confusion and honesty in the desert of choice and compromise that is the cinema ... and life.
I am still touched by the film. I cry, even though I have seen it a hundred times.
Hany Abu-Assad
DIRECTOR'S BIOGRAPHY
A native Palestinian, Hany Abu-Assad studied and worked as an airplane engineer in the Netherlands before entering the world of film and television production. After working on television programs about foreign immigrants and on documentaries like Dar o Dar for Channel 4 and Long Days in Gaza for the BBC, he founded Ayloul Film Productions in 1990.
By 1992 Assad had written and directed his first short film, Paper House -- the adventures of a thirteen year old Palestinian boy trying to build his family's dream home out of the rubble of their original dwelling. Paper House was made for NOS Dutch television and won several international awards at film festivals in Paris and Jerusalem.
One year later, Assad produced Rashid Masharawi's feature film Curfew -- a co-production of WDR, ARTE, AVRO, and Argus Film Productions. Curfew took the Gold Pyramid at Cairo, the UNESCO Prize at Cannes, and the Golden Antigone at the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival.
After writing, producing, and directing his second short, The 13th, Assad began developing a feature length project with writer Arnon Grunberg. The resulting film, The Fourteenth Chick, effectively explored the elements of cinematic narrative style in a comedy about two Amsterdam lovers. The film opened the 1998 Netherlands Film Festival Utrecht.
Other recent works include the bittersweet documentary Nazareth 2000 -- made for Dutch VPRO television. Here the turmoil of a divided city and its quarrelling Christian and Muslim communities is observed by two gas station attendants; and Assad's gentle sarcasm lends the picture a surprisingly humorous air.
With the founding (with Bero Beyer) of Augustus Films in 2000, Assad developed scripts for In Between Two Days and Rana's Wedding -- both feature length narrative projects. Rana was produced in 2001/2002 with the support of the Palestinian Film Foundation (part of the Palestinian National Authority's Ministry of Culture) and was selected for the 2002 International Critic's Week at Cannes.
Assad recently completed a fellowship at the Sundance Institute's 2003 Screenwriter's Lab and is at work on a new feature film.
CAST AND CREW
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Cast
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| Clara Khoury |
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RANA |
| Khalifa Natour |
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KHALIL |
| Ismael Dabbag |
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RAMZY |
| Walid Abed Elsalam |
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MARRIAGE OFFICIAL |
| Sami Metwasi |
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FRIEND |
| Zuher Fahoum |
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FATHER |
| Georgina Asfour |
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MARY |
| Manal Awad |
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ALIA |
| Nasrin Buqa'i |
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SAMIRA |
| Houda Imam |
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AUNT |
| Bushra Karaman |
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GRANDMA |
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Crew
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| Producers |
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Bero Beyer
George Ibrahim
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| Director |
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Hany Abu-Assad |
| Director of Photography |
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Brigit Hillenius, N.S.C. |
| Associate Producer |
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Mohammad Rachid |
| Story |
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Liana Badr |
| Screenplay |
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Liana Badr
Ihab Lamey
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| Editor |
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Denise Janzée |
| Sound Designer |
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Peter Flamman |
| Line Producer |
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Mohammad Buqa'i |
| Music |
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Mariecke van der Linden
Bashar Abd Rabbou
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| Lighting |
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Hidde Boorsma |
| Sound |
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Mark Wessner |
| Costumes |
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Hamada Atallah |
| Casting |
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Najwa Mubarky |
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