Boston Palestine Film Festival Review: A House in Jerusalem (2023) dir. Muayad Alayan
The largely aloof Michael Shapiro (Johnny Harris) and his fearless daughter Rebecca (Miley Locke) mourn their recently departed wife/mother and move to Israel, in land that once belonged to Palestinians displaced in 1948, to begin anew.
The Boston Palestine Film Festival ran from October 13 through October 22 after postponing the live component of the festival after the ongoing devastation of Palestine. The live festival returns January 19-25, 2024.
Click here for the schedule and ticket info, and check out Joshua Polanski’s coverage of many of the festival titles here.
A HOUSE IN JERUSALEM (2023) dir. Muayad Alayan
The third feature film from the al-Quds (Jerusalem) based filmmaker Muayad Alayan, A House in Jerusalem, begins with an ingenious premise: the ghost of a Palestinian girl haunts a house now owned by British settlers from the modern era. The ghost, Rasha (Sheherazade Makhoul Farrell), and the majority of the horror, are de-spookified. She isn’t scary: what happened to her is. Rasha’s just a little girl, perhaps a little pale, but she isn’t obscured by any visual effects nor does she defy physical reality. The decision turns the dehumanizing aesthetics of traditional ghost and demonic films into a thoroughly humanizing endeavor.
The largely aloof Michael Shapiro (Johnny Harris) and his fearless daughter Rebecca (Miley Locke) mourn their recently departed wife/mother and move to Israel, in land that once belonged to Palestinians displaced in 1948, to begin anew.
Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.