The Time That Remains

The third part of Elia Suleiman's loose trilogy charting the story of Palestinian dispossession and displacement over the last 60 years, The Time That Remains is the director's most ambitious effort to date. Beginning in 1948 on the day his hometown of Nazareth officially surrendered to the Israeli army and continuing through to the most recent Intifada, the film skilfully interweaves the personal and the political. Just as with his earlier works Chronicle of a Disappearance and Divine Intervention, The Time That Remains features many of the aesthetic characteristics viewers have come to associate with Suleiman: the surreal, blackly comic vignettes; a fractured dramatic narrative and, of course, Suleiman himself playing a silent, impassive observer. What does stand out this time round is the sense of emotional depth which the film is rooted in. Suleiman used his own parents' diaries for inspiration while writing the screenplay, and the film is as much a heart-breaking testament to them as it is a defiant reminder of Palestinian history.

Ali Jaafar