A Wider Angle Film Series: ALAM

For December, A Wider Angle, our monthly film series highlighting independent global cinema, will screen the 2022 film Alam ("flag" in Arabic), the debut feature film directed by Palestinian director Firas Khoury, whose earlier short films such as Yellow Mums (Best Short Film at the Jerusalem Film Festival) and Maradona's Legs (numerous awards at international festivals) had been very well received. Alam premiered at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and went on to win the Best Film and Audience awards at the Cairo Film Festival.

Tamer, a Palestinian teenager in Israel, leads a typical high school student's life (clumsily searching for drugs, flirting with the girls, playing video games, slacking off at school), until the arrival of a beautiful and politically active new student named Maysaa' at his school. Drawn to her and, by extension, her political activism, Tamer (against his father's wishes) and his buddies join Maysaa' and fellow classmate Safwat in a covert and at times comically inept operation to raise the Palestinian flag at their school in place of the Israeli flag on Israel's Independence Day, a time of mourning and memorialization for Palestinians.

In Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles. (Running time 109 minutes)

For a review of the film, click here.

A Wider Angle film series is made possible through funding provided by the Friends of the Library.