Abu Shadi (Mohammad Bakri) is a divorced father and a school teacher in his mid-60s living in Nazareth. After his daughter’s wedding in one month he will be living alone. Shadi (Saleh Bakri), his architect son, arrives from Rome after years abroad to help his father to hand-deliver the wedding invitations to each guest, which is the local Palestinian custom. As the estranged pair spend the day together, the tense details of their relationship come to a head challenging their fragile and very different lives.
Annemarie Jacir Director
Filmography Selected
Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir has written, directed and produced over sixteen films. Her short film LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES (2003) was the first Arab short film in history to be an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival and continued to break ground when it went on to be a finalist for the Academy Awards.
Her second work to debut in Cannes Un Certain Regard, the critically acclaimed SALT OF THIS SEA (2008), garnered fourteen international awards, included the FIPRESCI Critics Award. It was the first feature film directed by a Palestinian woman and Palestine?s 2008 Oscar Entry for Foreign Language Film.
WHEN I SAW YOU (a New Wave release) won, among other awards, Best Asian Film at the 63rd Berlin Intl Film Festival and Best Arab Film in Abu Dhabi FF. It was also Palestine?s 2012 Oscar Entry. Notably, the film?s production was entirely Arab‑financed with all Palestinian producers marking a new trend in Arab cinema.
WAJIB is her third Feature film
FEATURE FILMS
Wajib (2017)
When I Saw You (2012)
Salt of this Sea (2008)
SHORTS
Like Twenty Impossibles (2003)
Sound of the Street (2006)
An Explanation : (and then Burn the Ashes) (2005)
A Few Crumbs for the Birds (2005)
Until When (2004)
Palestine is Waiting (2001)
The Satellite Shooters (2001)
Two Hundred Years of American Ideology (2000)
A Revolutionary Tale (2000)
A Post-Oslo History (1998)
Interview (1994)
★★★★
What?s most impressive is the way Jacir reveals these complex intertwining backstories through apparently incidental interaction. With a superb lightness of touch she uncovers the ancient hurts with which these characters wrestle, laying bare the raw nerves beneath the polite smiles...a film of surprising warmth and generosity, which takes a situation riven by discord and turns it into a melancholy song of resolution.
Mark Kermode, The Observer
★★★★
'Big ideas and the everyday frictions of family elide in this sensitive, impressive Palestinian drama.'
Dave Calhoun, Time Out
★★★★
?A whip-smart, moving comedy of family and community.?
"It is the apparently apolitical normality of Wajib which paradoxically is its most powerful political message.?
John Bleasdale, CineVue
★★★★
"Annemarie Jacir?s comedy-drama interleaves simmering tension in the Israeli town with moments of terrific humour."
Leslie Felperin, The Guardian
★★★★
This funny-poignant Palestinian ?road movie? trundles down every known or imaginable street while giving the sardonic, critical welly to ethnic and political tensions.
Nigel Andrews, The Financial Times
★★★★
'The droll script and humane performances are quite special.'
Ed Potton, The Times
?Proof, if any further evidence was needed, that Jacir is the pre-eminent female filmmaker in the Arab world, whether she?s working as a director, producer, editor or screenwriter.?
Kaleem Aftab, Filmmaker Magazine
★★★★
"Quietly compelling drama...eye-widening look inside a Palestinian family."
Thomas Nguyen, Little White Lies
★★★★
?Annemarie Jacir's characters may not leave the city of Nazareth as they take a circular road trip in Wajib but the emotional distance they travel is considerable.?
Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film
★★★★
"Annemarie Jacir's inner-city road movie sees this duo (winningly played by real-life father and son Mohammed and Saleh Bakri) spar over matters both serious and trivial. Even as Jacir ably explores faultiness of politics, culture and tradition, she delivers a wryly affectionate odd-couple comedy. "
Simon Kinnear, Total Film
★★★★
'Warm and relatable road movie from Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir.'
Allan Hunter, The List
★★★★
"This is expert filmmaking from Annemarie Jacir, now a veteran of the art house festival circuit. A story of fathers and sons, East and West, progression and conservation, Wajib intelligently explores the tensions within an Arab family living in contemporary Israel."
Joseph Owen, Upcoming