TICKET TO JERUSALEM

Rashid Masharawi
Palestine 2002 | 85 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU

Jaber and Sanah live in a refugee camp in Ramal­lah. Sanah works here for the Pales­tin­ian ambu­lance ser­vice. Jaber has dreamed up quite a spe­cial job to do some­thing about the oppres­sive sit­u­a­tion in the place. He runs a mobile cinema for chil­dren in the refugee camps of Ramal­lah, Gaza and the West Bank. Not a simple job, as the Pales­tin­ian film pro­jec­tion­ist has to nego­ti­ate numer­ous Israeli con­trol points every day with his bulky film pro­jec­tor and heavy film rolls. This all costs time, nerves and patience, and is not always with­out danger. Rashid Maharawi’s fic­ti­tious doc­u­men­tary tells poet­i­cal­ly and with real­ism of Pales­tin­ian real­i­ty (“it looks like a proper Amer­i­can action film here,” Jaber’s mechan­ic com­ments on the Israeli tanks and street block­ades during one of their cinema trips) and of the belief in the utopi­an power of cinema beyond these daily scenes of a state of siege.