Palestinian writer-director Annemarie Jacir‘s quietly devastating Palestine 1936 (2025) is a dramatisation of the 1936–1939 Palestinian Arab revolt against British colonial rule, which, with the 1920s sectarian clashes between the Palestinian Arabs, the Jewish Yishuv, and British colonial forces in the British Mandate for Palestine, sits at the very root of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The film proves to be both heartbreaking and frustrating, and this is somewhat to be expected, as it (almost) inevitably uses historical shorthand in covering a pivotal yet contested period, rife with intricate and underhand mechanics, which gave birth to the Israeli state, founded in 1948, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and amidst its own ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian Arab population in the Nakba.
The story was shot almost entirely in Palestine, in the occupied West Bank, and partly in Jordan, standing in for the rural areas and exteriors, and in its need for psychogeographical accuracy, as well as in featuring an impressive international cast, it represents an incredible feat in filming alone, as principal photography took place after the outbreak of the 2023 Gaza War.
The director’s insistence on the importance of location in a film about a land grab, and in close proximity to such dire and dangerous circumstances, is both daring and admirable: “Filming Palestine 36 became an act of preservation of places and lives at risk of erasure. It was clear we might never come back. We filmed under duress because memory itself was at stake.”
In its set historical frame, this is a straightforward anti-colonial account of events that preceded and instigated the revolt — the push for independence from the imperial rule (involving both Muslim and Christian Palestinians), defying British support for the Zionist nationalist cause, as stated in the Balfour Declaration, growing concerns over the mass influx of the Jewish community to Palestine (in the wake of the rise of anti-semitism and fascism in Europe), and the controversial sale of Palestinian farmland to the settlers, some of which had been blatantly seized by the colonial masters and transferred to its new owners under the guise of land-registry modernisation.
The key players portrayed in the increasingly bloody clashes are either historical (e.g. High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope, a droll, excellent Jeremy Irons), or amalgams of characters (e.g. Yusuf, the film’s Palestinian rebel protagonist, a charismatic Karim Daoud Anaya) — with notable contentious RL characters omitted (e.g. Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who infamously met with Adolf Hitler in 1941), or an entire group (Jewish settlers), remaining eerily opaque, narratively undifferentiated, existing only as people who are at first pitied by the villagers, turned into instigators of violence, dwelling “beyond the wall”, which seems entirely cinematically deliberate. The Jewish indigenous population is shown to be almost non-existent, which is simply a narrative fail.
These last two directorial decisions present my only serious issues with the plot, and a significant weakness of bias in Jacir‘s otherwise morally steady if too didactic storytelling. Yet making the gist of the story overwhelmingly about the British colonial vs. Palestinian Arab dispute, with Jewish settlers in the margins, is a decidedly strange yet politically bold choice.
Nevertheless, the heart of Palestine 1936 is not in the granular points of the region’s tragic and labyrinthine history (which it pedantically depicts), rather it lies in the beautifully portrayed resilience of the Palestinian people, violently ousted from their homes yet fiercely connected to the land, diverse, freedom-loving and fearless, with outstanding turns by the majestic Hiam Abbass, as Hanan, the rebel elder in Yusuf’s village, a soulful Billy Howle as Thomas, the sympathetic British official in love with the fiery (and married) liberal newspaper editor Khouloud (Yasmine Al Massri), increasingly disenchanted by her secretly Zionist-funded, British-appeasing husband, an attitude not uncommon in the Westernised Palestinian Arab city elites, further deepening the urban/rural divide.
Colourised archival footage from the period is a gem used in the most sophisticated of ways, bringing an entire buried civilisation to life — subversively, defiantly.
A worthy, heartfelt if flawed endeavour, subdued and serious, politically-charged, and highly relevant for the times.
★★★☆☆
Author: ©Milana Vujkov
Lola On Film 