Rooted in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Farah Nabulsi’s debut feature has had the dubious good fortune of hitting the film festival circuit just as the war erupted into its bloody, tragic new phase. Indeed, The Teacher is screening in El Gouna this week as part of a special sidebar dedicated to Palestinian cinema, which was added to the program after the Egyptian festival was twice postponed and rescheduled due to the ongoing horrors in Gaza.
Nabulsi is a British-born director of Palestinian heritage who combines activism, education and cinema, producing films through her own not-for-profit media company Native Liberty Productions. She previously won a BAFTA and an Oscar nomination with her debut short, The Present (2020), which starred the same leading man as The Teacher, Palestinian heart-throb Saleh Bakri (The Band’s Visit, The Blue Caftan). Nabulsi and Bakri both won major prizes at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film International Film Festival earlier this month.
Nabulsi claims The Teacher is not a political film but a “human drama set in a political landscape.” Whether it is possible to make a non-political film about such a fiercely polarising conflict, particularly in the current highly charged climate, is arguable. But the heart of this modestly scaled story is a series of troubled father-son relationships, giving it a healthy shot at universal resonance. Nabulsi comes to her debut feature with fine ingredients, noble motives and urgently topical themes, but too often her inexperience lets her down as she wobbles unsteadily between soapy melodrama and low-energy thriller.
Billed as based on real events, The Teacher was inspired by the case of Gilad Shalit, a sergeant in the Israel Defence Force who was captured by Hamas in 2006 and held hostage for five years. After lengthy negotiations brokered by Egypt and Turkey, he was eventually released in exchange for over 1000 Palestinian prisoners. Nabulsi fictionalises Shalit as an Israeli-American called Nathaniel Cohen, and wisely never even names Hamas in the film, but otherwise the essentials are the same.
Bakri plays Basem, a kind-hearted Palestinian schoolteacher at a boys’ school in the West Bank. He takes a special fatherly interest in hot-headed Yacoub (played by Bakri’s own younger brother Mahmoud) and his more mild-mannered sibling Adam (Muhammad Abed El Rahman). The boys live in the same village as their teacher, and share a similar rocky relationship with the Israeli justice system. After witnessing his family home demolished by the authorities, a routine occurrence in the occupied territories, an incandescent Yacoub confronts an armed settler (played by the film’s production designer Nael Kanj) and is fatally wounded. Basem steps in to support the family, helping them build a murder case while diligently trying to steer Adam away from the temptation to avenge himself against a rigged system.
As these tragedies are unfolding, Basem’s old-fashioned, poetry-driven flirtation with British volunteer worker Lisa (Imogen Poots) eventually pays off with a full-blown romance. But complicating the path of true love is an unnamed Palestinian militant group who are holding Nathaniel Cohen hostage, and call on the teacher for help in hiding him. Despite his outward image as a peace-loving man of letters, it transpires that Basem has a guilt-haunted history of protesting against the occupation, serving time in jail and destroying his former marriage in the process. When Adam discoverers that Basem counsels peace while secretly helping armed resistance groups, he is driven to vigilante violence himself. Basem is forced to make desperate choices to save the boy from his worst impulses.
The Teacher has worthy motives, a capable cast and depressingly timely subject matter in its favour. But good intentions are not the same as good cinema. Far too much of Nabulsi’s screenplay feels like a thin first draft, passionless and poorly paced, with stiled dialogue and sketchy characters. The fatherly bond between teacher and student never feels convincing, while the simmering erotic chemistry between Basem and Lisa is oddly tepid too, given the hotness of the two actors. Nabulsi’s blandly conventional, underpowered directing style is a key flaw here, flattening the impact of events that should have had cinematic sweep, tragic gravitas or lusty sizzle.
In fairness, The Teacher is not a total dud. The cast do their best with clunky lines, especially Bakri, who can set a screen smouldering just by gazing soulfully towards a dusty border checkpoint. There may also be some educational value in Nabulsi introducing general cinema audiencew to routine injustices committed against Palestinians like house demolitions, teenage offenders sentenced to harsh adult sentences, or the burning of olive groves by incoming settlers. In one of the film’s most emotionally charged scenes, Basem assures the kidnapped IDF soldier’s anguished American father (Stanley Townsend) that the prisoner exchange deal will eventually go ahead “because your people believe that your son is worth a thousand of mine.” A few more of these sharper insights would have given much-needed bite to Nabulsi’s well-meaning but heavy-handed debut.
Director, screenwriter: Farah Nabulsi
Cast: Saleh Bakri, Imogen Poots, Muhammad Abed El Rahman, Stanley Townsend, Paul Herzberg, Mahmoud Bakri, Andrea Irvine
Cinematography: Gilles Porte
Editing: Mike Pike
Music: Alex Baranowski
Producers: Sawsan Asfari, Farah Nabulsi, Ossama Bawardi
Production companies: Cocoon Films (UK), Native Liberty Productions (UK), Philistine Films (Palestine)
World sales: Goodfellas, Paris
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Special Presentations)
In Arabic, English
115 minutes
