Wajib

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.

Week Commencing 14 Sept  (Also on Curzon Home Cinema , BFI Player)

Week Commencing 21 Sept (Also on Curzon Home Cinema , BFI Player)

Week Commencing 28 Sept (Also on Curzon Home Cinema , BFI Player)

Week Commencing 5 October (Also on Curzon Home Cinema , BFI Player)

Week Commencing 19 October (Also on Curzon Home Cinema , BFI Player)

Week Commencing 26 October (Also on Curzon Home Cinema , BFI Player

Week Commencing 2 November (Also on Curzon Home Cinema , BFI Player)

Week Commencing 16 November (Also on Curzon Home Cinema , BFI Player)

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 63^rd 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

Filmography

FEATURE FILMS

Wajib (2017)

When I Saw You (2012)

Salt of this Sea (2008)

SHORTS

Like Twenty Impossibles (2003)

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)

★★★★

'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.”

For film bookings please contact Colin Burch at Verve Pictures — [email protected]. Press resources are on the Press page.