Palestine 36: a broad primer on a complex period in Palestinian history

Annemarie Jacir did not expect to premiere Palestine 36 during a genocide. The Palestinian filmmaker had been working on a period drama about the region since before the pandemic. In autumn 2023, Jacir’s team were a week away from beginning principal photography in the West Bank when Hamas murdered around 1,200 Israelis in the attacks of 7 October, derailing production and propelling a period piece to horrifying new topicality. By the time Palestine 36 made it to this year’s Toronto Film Festival in September, Israel had killed at least 63,000 people in Gaza. Cast members took to the red carpet with a blood-stained keffiyeh and placards calling for an end to the violence; the premiere was greeted by a 20-minute standing ovation.

It’s a grim coincidence that Jacir’s film, which focuses on a pivotal moment in Palestinian history, has arrived during another painfully formative moment for the country. Palestine 36 takes as its focus not Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence – known to Palestinians as the Nakba (‘catastrophe’) – though that looms ominously on the film’s horizon, but an earlier moment of profound change: the year 1936, when the Great Palestinian Revolt broke through the complacency of British rule to protest against long-standing injustices, land theft and Zionist policies.

The story of the revolt, and the violent backlash from the British authorities, is complex and sprawling. Jacir tackles this challenge through an ambitious, multi-stranded narrative featuring a diverse ensemble of characters who together offer a cross-section of a society in flux. Port worker Khalid (Saleh Bakri) is pushed into the rebel movement by poor working conditions; sophisticated journalist Khouloud (Yasmine Al Massri) finds herself at odds with Jerusalem’s high society when she exposes colonial injustices; a village community, including young Afra (Wardi Eilabouni) and her grandmother Hanan (Hiam Abbas) face escalating threats from settlers. Meanwhile British officials, including an idealistic administrator (Billy Howle), an inept high commissioner (Jeremy Irons) and the Christian Zionist army officer Orde Wingate (played by Robert Aramayo as a sadist), struggle to maintain the status quo in the face of mounting resistance. At the centre of the story is Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya), a young man from the village who serves as a connector between urban and rural worlds when he becomes the protégé of a wealthy patron in Jerusalem.

With films such as When I Saw You (2012) and Wajib (2017), Jacir has established herself as a nuanced chronicler of Palestinian life. Palestine 36 addresses her trademark themes – identity, the weight of history – on a much larger scale, combining the conventions of classic period drama with a thorough unpacking of the geopolitical failures that have shaped the region. Like Gurinder Chadha’s Partition drama Viceroy’s House (2017), Palestine 36 packages complex colonial history in Merchant Ivory-style period upholstery. That approach is easy to dismiss – “This is the part where they educate and elevate us,” Khouloud says wryly, at a British organised radio demonstration, perhaps pre-empting a criticism which would be levelled at Jacir’s film. And it’s true that Palestine 36 has flaws. It’s a huge story, and many characters are rendered in broad strokes – the idealistic rebel, the psychopathic soldier, the fiery journalist – while the need to swiftly cover fast-moving political developments means that dialogue is often expositional. A story on this scale might have worked better as a miniseries (but how many TV commissioners would have had the guts to take on such a project?).

Palestine 36 arrives in cinemas at a time when Palestinian films are receiving unprecedented attention. Hiam Abbass’s presence in a small supporting role brings to mind the documentary in which she featured, Bye Bye Tiberias (2023), directed by her daughter Lina Soualem, which refracted the wider story of Palestinian displacement through intimate family history. Scenes set in the village gut-wrenchingly echo more recent footage of soldier and settler harassment in No Other Land (2024). Jacir’s film is less layered and formally interesting than those films, but it does offer an engaging, accessible historical primer, which will likely reach audiences that would never come to the cinema to see this story old as documentary. Despite occasional slickness, it’s clear by the devastating conclusion that Jacir is not shying away from brutal reality. An affecting denouement, which gestures towards seemingly unbreakable chains of intergenerational violence, shakes off any remaining comforting period drama gloss to speak directly, arrestingly, to today. 

► Palestine 36 is in UK cinemas from 31 October.