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FOLKTALE OF PALESTINE

By Dahna ABOU RAHME

Documentary - Development 2015

A Folktale of Palestine is a journey in search of love stories set against the tumultuous changes of early 20th century Palestine. Unraveling a different geography, storytellers, travellers, revolutionaries, enchant us with tales of love and belonging across generations.

- Year of production
- 2015
- Genres
- Documentary, Animation
- Countries
- LEBANON
- Languages
- ARABIC
- Budget
- 0.3 - 0.6 M$
- Duration
- 70 mn
- Director(s)
- Dahna ABOU RAHME
- Writer(s)
- Dahna ABOU RAHME
- Producer(s)
- Jinane DAGHER (Orjouane Productions), Sabine SIDAWI (Orjouane Productions)
- Synopsis
- ‘A folktale of Palestine’ will explore the first half of the 1900’s through the intimate lives of ordinary people who lived through sweeping historical events. Through the lens of love stories that originate from Palestine and spiral beyond, the film engages with a time and place when borders weren’t as defined and rigid. Moving between characters in the past and the present, the film meshes together an inter-generational thread that binds us together. Stories that in the retelling also connect us to the historical and social forces at play and how people fought against injustice, found love and belonging.
  The film is a search into our past, to the years between the Ottoman Empire and the British mandate in pre-1948 Palestine. A search for the legacy of a place, of villages and cities, carried inside the lives of the characters of this film, scattered along a vast geography. They allow us to imagine the possibilities that could have been that can still be. It is a search into family histories, into personal and historical struggles to find the possibilities of love and change beyond the borders of our own homes. I take off from my own search into the unfulfilled love story of my great aunt Hilweh to a Nicaraguan revolutionary, to begin my search for other stories.
  The characters map out love geographies that unravel like a folktale between reality and the imagination, meshing real stories, correspondences and archival material with animation, shadow puppetry and song.