has not lost hope. The Palestinian filmmaker, who will receive the honorary Heart of Sarajevo award at the 2024 , has spent his career chronicling the experiences of his people, and the politics of the troubled Middle East. His features: (1996), (2002), (2009) and (2019), avoid polemics by using deadpan humor and minimal dialogue, with a focus on the everyday resistance of ordinary people.
That resistance is personified by Suleiman’s on-screen character “E.S.,” a silent, Buster Keaton-like figure who bears witness to the absurdities of life as experienced by Israeli Arabs (such as himself, he was born in Nazareth in 1960) and the citizens of Gaza as a window into the wider world.
Since the Oct.7 attacks by Hamas on Israel and the Israeli bombing and land invasion of Gaza, the wider world is again watching as violent men decide the fate of the region. Being a Palestinian artist, says Suleiman, “puts you in a kind of an alienated position vis-à-vis the world, as you wonder about the horrors happening in Palestine and the governments that are supporting that horror.
” But amid the darkness, the director remains surprisingly hopeful about the possibility for change, and of art as a form of resistance. “Art marches a lot slower than bullets,” he says. “We might not see change in our lifetime, [but] the accumulation of production of culture that inspires freer people might eventually have some kind of result.
” I don’t really know what it is, but I think I’ve .