Interview with Elia Suleiman on the Palestinian Director: Sarajevo Film Festival

Elia Suleiman has not lost hope.

The Palestinian filmmaker, who will receive the Heart of Sarajevo Honorary Award at the 2024 Sarajevo Film Festival, has dedicated his career to chronicling the experiences of his people and the politics of the troubled Middle East. His reports: Chronicle of a disappearance (1996), Divine intervention (2002), The time that remains (2009) and This must be heaven (2019), avoids controversy by using deadpan humor and minimal dialogue, focusing on the everyday resistance of ordinary people.

This resistance is personified by Suleiman’s on-screen character, “ES,” a silent, Buster Keaton-like figure who bears witness to the absurdities of life as it is experienced by Israeli Arabs (like him, he was born in Nazareth in 1960) and Gaza citizens as a window on the outside world.

Since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, the world is once again watching violent men decide the fate of the region.

Being a Palestinian artist, Suleiman says, “puts you in a kind of alienated position from the world, as you question the horrors that are happening in Palestine and the governments that are supporting those horrors.” But amid the darkness, the filmmaker remains surprisingly optimistic about the possibility of change and art as a form of resistance. “Art moves much slower than bullets,” he says. “We may not see change in our lifetimes, [but] “The accumulation of cultural production that inspires freer people might eventually have some result.”

Congratulations on the honor you received in Sarajevo. You have been coming to the festival for many years, what connects you to Sarajevo?

I don’t really know what it is, but I think that’s what I felt from the first time I came here. There is something very familiar about this city. It’s not a political or intellectual connection – at least not consciously – it’s more of an emotional connection. I identify with the city, the festival and the people. I’m invited every year and I’ve been president of the jury, I’ve screened my films there, I’ve done a few master classes. I think I went there once for no reason at all. It became like a family affair. Maybe the political history of the place added something to the people and the festival, they identify with a number of causes related to cinema, but there’s just something human and beautiful about Sarajevo.

You are receiving a lifetime achievement award and I want to talk about your career, but the issue of Gaza is very important and I think we should address it immediately. As a Palestinian and a Palestinian filmmaker, what has changed for you since October 7 and since the beginning of the war in Gaza?

That’s an interesting question because nothing has changed. I would start a new project, I would start writing down ideas, I would see…