Palestinian history on Cinema #1—Nakba, 1948
Online Screening #1: 9/27-10/3 Japan-only on-demand streaming (link to come).
Salt of This Sea
Dir. Annemarie Jacir, Drama, 2008, 105 min, In Arabic & Hebrew w/ English and Japanese subtitles. Japan Premiere! Limited to the viewers located in Japan.
A sensational debut feature by the first Palestinian woman filmmaker. Official selection to Cannes Un Certain Regard. Palestine’ entry to the Oscars.
A working-class Palestinian American woman, whose parents were Palestinian refugees, makes her first return to her family’s homeland. Her mission was to retrieve her grandfather’s savings, which had been frozen since his exile during the Nakba. But…
Annemarie Jacir
She has made 16 films to date, and all of her 3 features have been selected as Palestine’s entry to the Oscars. She was the one that Zhang Yimou selected as his protégé when he served as a mentor in the Rolex Mentorship program in 2010. She also served as a judge at Cannes. Despite all these accolades, her works remain unknown in Japan. UPAF is honored to introduce her two works, this one and her second feature “When I Saw You” (about the Six-Day War in 1967) at this 10th edition of our festival. Annemarie grew up in Saudi Arabia as a Palestinian diaspora member, studied film in New York, and now lives and continues to make films in the West Bank and Anman (Jordan).
Note: The Japanese subs are for Deaf and hard-of-hearing. An in-person screening at Hokancho 4-chome Lounge Kado (a small cafe) in Okayama city in mid-January 2025 (max 25 guests).