The Palestinian point of view is all too rare in media, including cinema. In 1960 the film Exodus mythologized the founding of the State of Israel from the Zionist perspective, bolstering Israel’s version of events as the dominant western narrative. Palestine 36 serves as a necessary antidote—a historical drama about the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936-1939, which fought against British colonial rule and British support for Zionism, that puts the Palestinian outlook front and centre.
Written and directed by Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir amid Israel’s ongoing genocide of her people, the film makes for an emotional viewing experience. It follows several characters through the revolt, from the six-month Arab general strike to insurrection and armed struggle in the countryside. Yusuf Bassawi (Karim Daoud Anaya), a villager from the fictionalized community of Al-Basma, works in Jerusalem as a chauffeur and assistant to wealthy Palestinian newspaper publisher Amir Atef (Dhaffer L’Abidine), but gradually finds himself drawn into the uprising.
Khuloud (Yasmine Al Massri) is an Oxford-educated journalist and Amir’s wife who writes pro-Arab, anti-Zionist articles for his newspaper, often under a male pseudonym. Khalid (Saleh Bakri) is a dockworker and farmer who joins the revolt after suffering numerous personal injustices, such as being docked pay. Afra (Wardi Eilabouni) is an adolescent girl trying to navigate the changes around her with the help of grandmother Hanan (Hiam Abbass). Her friend Kareem (Ward Helou), is a shoeshine boy and the son of Christian priest Father Boulos (Jalal Altawil), who backs his neighbours during the revolt.
The main antagonists of the film are not the Jews of Mandatory Palestine, who are mostly seen building settlements in the distance, but rather the British authorities who took over control of Palestine after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. British imperialism feared the rise of Arab national consciousness as a threat to their interests and cynically backed Zionism as part of their divide-and-rule strategy. That the Zionist project required the dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland was of no consequence to the imperialists, represented in Palestine 36 by High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope (Jeremy Irons).
Palestine 36 shows the cynicism not only of the British imperialists, but of the Arab bourgeoisie and landlords who gave crucial support to Zionism. Taking advantage of rising prices, absentee Arab landlords sold land to Zionist settlers resulting in the expulsion of Palestinian farmers. The film highlights the class divide among Arabs. Yusuf attends a meeting of Arab businessmen and landlords who agree when one asks, “Is Zionism really so bad for us? For business?” Yusuf says Palestinian farmers are losing land daily, with many evicted from their lands, as settlers have taken over. A landlord retorts that “not all villagers pay their debts to the landowners”—to which Yusuf says people can barely feed their families, let alone pay debts.
Amir publishes Zionist columns in his newspaper, defending his actions to a furious Khuloud on the basis of personal advancement. “Honestly, if it helps us secure a position in this whole thing … They really believe I have a chance to be mayor,” he says. Yet even Amir is shocked when the Royal Commission of Lord Peel announces its support for the partition of Palestine. Characters listen in stunned silence to radio news of the Peel Report’s recommendations, followed immediately by a power outage as Palestinian militants sabotage the electric grid to protest British policies.
Scenes of British soldiers demanding papers, terrorizing Palestinian villages, blowing up houses with their inhabitants still inside, and committing summary executions recall actions we’re more used to seeing from Nazis in World War II films. Palestine 36 reminds us that all imperialists enforce their rule through brutal violence and atrocities. As the British Marxist Ted Grant wrote in 1940:
The Nazis … are merely acting in time-honoured imperialist fashion, a little more open, a little cruder. It was with methods such as these that the British Empire was built up and maintained … All Empires have been built in this fashion; the difference exists only in geography and time. Hitler has transferred to the continent of Europe the methods of Britain in Asia and Africa.
Capt. Orde Wingate (Robert Aramayo), a British Army officer who leads a counter-insurgency campaign to crush the revolt, is a perfect representative of the kind of sadistic thugs that imperialism empowers to subjugate native populations. A devoted Christian Zionist, Wingate organizes and commands joint British-Jewish units known as Special Night Squads that inflict collective punishment on villages suspected of supporting rebels—burning crops, destroying homes, and shooting residents in cold blood. He uses a Palestinian boy as a human shield by tying him to the front of his vehicle, a common practice among British forces.
Showing the crimes that imperialism inflicted upon Palestinians nearly a century ago is vital for understanding the crimes it inflicts upon them today—but also to understanding the Palestinians’ ongoing will to resist. Seeing family members killed, a tragedy for every individual it affects, fuels desire for revenge among successive generations. Today, as in the 1930s, the viability of the Zionist project would not be possible without the backing of foreign imperialist powers who are complicit in its crimes.
Zionists perceive the very existence of a film like Palestine 36—selected as the Palestinian entry for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards—as a threat, since it humanizes Palestinians by portraying their grievances. Israeli police have banned the film and conducted a raid at an East Jerusalem screening on Jan. 22, arresting and interrogating the projectionist.
On April 4, Toronto police—who have consistently sought to intimidate the Palestine movement, including by arresting peaceful pro-Palestine activists—disrupted a screening of Palestine 36 at the TIFF Lightbox cinema. Police entered midway through the film, which was being presented by the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF), and began observing the audience, claiming to a TPFF organizer that they were doing a “neighbourhood walkabout” to check if the audience was “safe.” TIFF workers said they could not recall another instance where police entered a movie theatre partway through a film.
The Gaza war itself shut down principal photography during production, postponing its completion until the crew was able to return. On-location shooting gives the film an authenticity that captures the beauty of Palestine, underscoring both the tragedy of its native inhabitants’ dispossession and their determination to fight for their land. Jacir further enhances verisimilitude by incorporating colourized archival footage of Mandatory Palestine throughout.
If the screenplay occasionally suffers from the amount of exposition, and characters often feel like broad archetypes, it’s a forgivable creative choice—one that’s often unavoidable when trying to sum up complex historical events. Keeping the characterizations relatively straightforward makes sense when juggling a large number of characters, though at times the film feels like it lacks a narrative centre. Still, the result will please history buffs in its depiction of crucial 20th-century events that too often remain untold—a conscious choice by ruling classes for whom Zionism remains a useful tool of imperialism.
The film ends with scenes of people marching and waving Palestinian flags. Jacir leaves the final words to Palestinian poet and novelist Saleem al-Naffar, who was killed along with his family in a 2023 Israeli missile strike on their home in Gaza: “Our rhythm has always been die standing / In spite of wretched planes and all that life fractures, we remain. / Even if skies crush our land our song sings on.” The struggle to liberate Palestine continues, and it cannot be separated from the struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
Palestine 36 is showing in select theatres through early May; find a screening near you.
