Happy Holidays

The Boston Palestine Film Festival runs with a mix of in-person and online availability from October 17 through October 26. Click here for the schedule and ticket info, and watch the site for Joshua Polanski’s continuing coverage.

Our lives are intrinsically connected to those of our neighbors. This is just as true in Brighton, Jamaica Plain, and Cambridge as it is in Haifa. 

This also seems to be one of the through-lines in the still-fresh directorial career of Scandar Copti, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and currently living in the Emirates. His first feature film, Ajami, was co-directed with Israeli filmmaker Yaron Shani and zeroes in on the interconnectedness of the lives of the diverse people who call Jaffa, Tel Aviv home. Copti’s latest feature, Happy Holidays, which screens Sunday at the Boston Palestine Film Festival, makes a tapestry out of multicultural life in Haifa. It does so with an unchronological and episodic approach that centers around two families: one Palestinian, the other Israeli. 

The two families are connected by adult lovers around the Jewish holiday of Purim. Rami (Toufic Danial), the older brother in the Arab family, is dating Shirley (Shani Dahari), whose Jewish family is repulsed by the interracial relationship. Shirley is pregnant, we learn in the first scene, and wants to keep the child—a decision that Rami can’t come to understand. Rami’s affable sister Fifi (Manar Shehab) gets the most compelling narrative as she navigates misogyny and conservative sexual (and privacy) standards while trying to hide her medical records from her mother. 

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.