Cranleigh Film Club is showing Wajib (15) on Thursday 28 November starting at 7.30pm; doors open at 7.00pm. As usual our film will be shown in the Band Room, GU6 8AF, and there is ample parking in the adjacent Village Way car park.
Refreshments are available.
Wajib (15)
Annemarie Jacir, the director of our film for November, grew up in the Arab world, worked in Europe, then returned to Palestine. She’s an actress, screenwriter, poet and short story writer. She mentors young filmmakers: ‘the future is very bright. I have noticed the confidence in the young women I work with. I don’t remember my generation being so confident.’
It’s present-day Nazareth. The father had sent his son away years ago for his own good, due to his political affiliations and his strict political standards. Now, in this poignant, bitter-sweet comedy the two must come together to fulfil a tradition, a ‘social-duty’ (wajib) by going around town to hand-deliver his daughter’s wedding invitations. It’s a community that the father struggles to keep united and that the son no longer understands. And the social-duty exists on several levels. On the way round they argue about the state of the world as buried family tensions and revelations come to light. ‘I don’t feel filmmaking is a duty but rather an art form that I’m mad about’, explained Jacir, ‘everyone has their wajib, everyone has their own things they feel they need to do or should do. Much of it is empty. But some of it is about being kind to each other, and about being human, living in a community together. Even if one doesn’t understand the politics, the essence of the film is this father-son story, two men struggling to understand each other.’
“With superb lightness of touch Jacir uncovers the ancient hurts with which these characters wrestle, laying bare the nerves beneath the polite smiles. A film of surprising warmth and generosity, which takes a situation riven by discord and turns it into a song of resolution,” Guardian.
At one level the father represents the practical, real Palestine where you have to get along, whereas the son represents the ideal. But the clash of these two is not theatrical. The dialogues are so real that in the end the viewer does not feel injected by the director’s ideas; he just starts to rethink his own ideals and practices.
Come and join us!
Membership costs £30 per year, covering all 12 films. To join please email your details to the Membership Secretary, Sara Lock, at . We make a £5 charge for guests at each film. Do come along and enjoy the atmosphere!
