Divine Intervention is the title of a spectacular movie by Elia Suleiman, a genius Palestinian director from Nazareth. Elia Suleiman was also the star in this movie about love and pain. The movie was nominated for a Palme d’Or award in 2002 at Cannes Film Festival making Suleiman the first Palestinian to show at Cannes, and was considered for an Oscar the following year.
Divine Intervention is a movie that moves your imagination and speaks to your inner-self in seemingly un-related scenes that are both creative and powerful. Gradually, you’ll start to connect some of the events and characters in the film but mostly, it’s up to you how to make sense of everything.
You’ll find that the main characters in the film are silent, melancholic with absolutely no facial expressions but somehow, and I don’t know how they do it, you can still feel their emotions.
One extraordinary scene from the movie is when Suleiman pulls out a balloon with Yasser Arafat’s face on it, inflates it and flies it towards Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint.
Divine Intervention is a very unusual, artsy and powerful film everyone should see! and it’s not too serious for anyone; trust me you’ll get at least a couple of laughs from it. Some people classified it as a black comedy.
The film was screened last Tuesday at Darat Al-Funoon.
One of my favorite movies ever!
My favorite scene was probably the ninja scene, or maybe the soccer ball stab…
very interesting.
there are so many good new palestinian movies out there.
Any idea where can I find it ??
while israelis are busy making films anyone can understand, Palestinians filmmakers like Elia are making films that need a history and political manual to understand. no wonder the only films western producers are willing to promote are like Elia’s Devine Intervention. compare his film with the award-winning The Pianist, Munich, and other pro-Israeli films. Let’s face it, Palestinians make crap feature films. and recently, even their documentary films have turned crap. they are made for those who know the history of the conflict and who are already taking sides.
Jim,
Palestinian movie makers are often short on the money, it’s ridiculous to even compare between any Palestinian movie and Munich for example.
You don’t need a manual to understand Divine Intervention, you just need to be a little bit creative and have a heart. Especially Divine Intervention does not deal with history and politics in their actual forms but rather from a humanitarian side of the story. Are you sure you watched it? because I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with whose side you’re on. Injustice is pretty universal you know, and so is love!