News Analysis India

Tag: Farha

  • Farha: Girl grows up

    Express News Service

    Darin J Sallam’s debut feature Farha defies expectations. It’s a pertinent film to turn to, given the pervading debate on gender in the wake of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. But gradually through its 90-minute length Sallam’s film alters into something more — a piece of tragic and violent history of a nation and its people, a survival drama, and a coming-of-age tale, all rolled into one.

    Set in Palestine in 1948, it is inspired by the real-life story of young Radiyyeh. We see her in the beginning as the titular character Farha frolicking with her friends amid nature, picking figs, reading a novel by Shaima Hassan and arguing with the priest about why there isn’t a school for girls, just like there is one for boys. When asked what’s more for a woman to learn other than the Quran, she is quick to respond: Geography, History, Math, English. “Stubborn” is a word people constantly use to describe her.

    Farha unfolds as an engaging drama about this rebel with a cause, a headstrong girl, fighting for her rights in a conservative world. She doesn’t know how to cook. Even as her best friend Fareeda dreams of the sheep and trees of the village, Farha longs for the backpack, pens, and books in the city school. Her perceptive uncle convinces her mayor father that she is too young to be married off and should pursue studies instead. “Knowledge in youth becomes wisdom in age,” he argues.

    Even as she gets permission to complete her studies in the city and calls out her friend in jubilation for a party, the intimations of approaching misfortunes are all around her. The young ones who are defiant against the foreign troops, train with their imaginary guns. We hear incessant, urgent chatter about protecting the village. We see shadowy rebels, the local militia, lurking stealthily in the night, warning that the calls for a truce are mere illusions for Palestinians.

    It sets up a larger event within which to locate Farha/Raddiyeh and the future course of her life. That of the Nakba, also known as the Palestinian catastrophe, led to the destruction of the Homeland, and the persecution and displacement of the Palestinians. The reverberations of the violence and the exodus have only grown stronger over time. In fact, the filmmaker’s own family had fled Palestine for Jordan in 1948 and Sallam lays it bare straight and simple.

    As calls for the safety of women and children rise under siege, Farha’s father hides her in the pantry, promising to return for her. Alone in the darkness with the sounds of bombs and gunshots outside, her tenacity is tested. Will the tough nut survive the cataclysm? As she hopes against hope, the film reaches the tension of a survival drama. The young protagonist witnesses the harrowing depths of inhumanity. While death stalks a newborn and an innocent family faces untold horrors and brutality, Farha grows up, silently witnessing the violent slice of history through the cracks in the door and the little shaft on the wall.

    Kamar Taher as Farha effortlessly incites our care and concern while making us admire her strength in adversity. The Jordon-Sweden-Saudi Arabia co-production that opened at the Toronto International Film Festival gets intensely moving and progressively suffocating and ends on a note of boundless loss, despair, anguish, and hopelessness.

    Farha is a film where personal becomes political and political is assiduously personal. Sallam makes a strong statement. However, she is steadfast in communicating a lot by saying very little.

    Film: FarhaCinema Without BordersIn this weekly column, the writer introduces you to powerful cinema from across the world

    Darin J Sallam’s debut feature Farha defies expectations. It’s a pertinent film to turn to, given the pervading debate on gender in the wake of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. But gradually through its 90-minute length Sallam’s film alters into something more — a piece of tragic and violent history of a nation and its people, a survival drama, and a coming-of-age tale, all rolled into one.

    Set in Palestine in 1948, it is inspired by the real-life story of young Radiyyeh. We see her in the beginning as the titular character Farha frolicking with her friends amid nature, picking figs, reading a novel by Shaima Hassan and arguing with the priest about why there isn’t a school for girls, just like there is one for boys. When asked what’s more for a woman to learn other than the Quran, she is quick to respond: Geography, History, Math, English. “Stubborn” is a word people constantly use to describe her.

    Farha unfolds as an engaging drama about this rebel with a cause, a headstrong girl, fighting for her rights in a conservative world. She doesn’t know how to cook. Even as her best friend Fareeda dreams of the sheep and trees of the village, Farha longs for the backpack, pens, and books in the city school. Her perceptive uncle convinces her mayor father that she is too young to be married off and should pursue studies instead. “Knowledge in youth becomes wisdom in age,” he argues.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    Even as she gets permission to complete her studies in the city and calls out her friend in jubilation for a party, the intimations of approaching misfortunes are all around her. The young ones who are defiant against the foreign troops, train with their imaginary guns. We hear incessant, urgent chatter about protecting the village. We see shadowy rebels, the local militia, lurking stealthily in the night, warning that the calls for a truce are mere illusions for Palestinians.

    It sets up a larger event within which to locate Farha/Raddiyeh and the future course of her life. That of the Nakba, also known as the Palestinian catastrophe, led to the destruction of the Homeland, and the persecution and displacement of the Palestinians. The reverberations of the violence and the exodus have only grown stronger over time. In fact, the filmmaker’s own family had fled Palestine for Jordan in 1948 and Sallam lays it bare straight and simple.

    As calls for the safety of women and children rise under siege, Farha’s father hides her in the pantry, promising to return for her. Alone in the darkness with the sounds of bombs and gunshots outside, her tenacity is tested. Will the tough nut survive the cataclysm? As she hopes against hope, the film reaches the tension of a survival drama. The young protagonist witnesses the harrowing depths of inhumanity. While death stalks a newborn and an innocent family faces untold horrors and brutality, Farha grows up, silently witnessing the violent slice of history through the cracks in the door and the little shaft on the wall.

    Kamar Taher as Farha effortlessly incites our care and concern while making us admire her strength in adversity. The Jordon-Sweden-Saudi Arabia co-production that opened at the Toronto International Film Festival gets intensely moving and progressively suffocating and ends on a note of boundless loss, despair, anguish, and hopelessness.

    Farha is a film where personal becomes political and political is assiduously personal. Sallam makes a strong statement. However, she is steadfast in communicating a lot by saying very little.

    Film: FarhaCinema Without BordersIn this weekly column, the writer introduces you to powerful cinema from across the world

  • Film on Israel’s 1948 war ‘Farha’ shows Palestinian agony: Director Darin J. Sallam

    By AFP

    AMMAN: Jordanian film “Farha”, vehemently criticised in Israel, is based on true events and represents “only a drop in the ocean” of Palestinian suffering, director Darin J. Sallam told AFP.

    Released last month on Netflix, “Farha” depicts atrocities against Palestinians during the 1948 conflict following Israel’s creation, which Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”.

    The Arabic-language film tells the story of a Palestinian teenager, Farha, whose village comes under attack by Israeli forces.

    Her father hides her and, through a crack in a door, she witnesses the execution a family of Palestinian civilians, including two girls.

    Sallam, 35, said the plot for her first full-length feature was inspired by a story told to her by her mother, about a Palestinian woman named Radiyeh.

    The film recounts “the story of a girl who had been forced to abandon her dreams because of events she had no control over”, Sallam said.

    “Farha” featured in the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival and has won a dozen awards in other festivals.

    In Israel, where discussion of alleged atrocities during the 1948 war remains largely taboo, officials condemned Netflix over the decision to stream the film.

    “I wanted to open the world’s eyes to this pivotal moment in the history… and to show that this land was not without people,” Sallam said, of what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories.

    “Rather, it was a land with people who had lives, dreams, hopes and history.”

    ‘I am Farha’

    The film was shot in the northern Jordan towns of Ajlun and Al-Fuhais, which resemble the Palestinian village where Farha’s story begins.

    The teenage girl tries to persuade her father to let her complete her studies in the city, prepares for a friend’s wedding, and picks figs before her village is attacked.

    Sallam said she avoided showing violence, with the exception of the unarmed family’s killing.

    “This scene, which shook the Israeli government, is only a drop in the ocean of the suffering of millions of Palestinians during the Nakba,” she said.

    Sallam called for more filmmakers to explore this painful chapter in Palestinian history, which “almost never appears in cinema”.

    Her mother, of Syrian origin, had heard Radiyeh’s story at a refugee camp in that country and passed it on to her, “and I decided to make a film and share it”.

    “Radiyeh had been locked up by her father who feared for her, and when she was finally able to come out of hiding she went to Syria,” Sallam said. “That’s where she told the story to my mother.”

    The filmmaker said she had “lost all contact with this woman”, a resident of the war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, north of Damascus, since fighting in Syria began in 2011.

    After one screening of the film in the United States, an audience member spoke to Sallam.

    “A woman aged in her eighties who had survived the Nakba told me: ‘I am Farha’”, she said.

    ‘Lies’

    Former Israeli minister Avigdor Lieberman, who had served in government until Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power last month, said in November the film’s “whole purpose is to create a false pretence and incite against Israeli soldiers”.

    Chili Tropper, Israel’s former culture minister, said “Farha” shows “lies and libels”.

    For Sallam, whose father is Palestinian, “denying the Nakba is denying my existence, denying the tragedy of millions of people.”

    “My own father survived the Nakba. He… fled to Jordan with his parents.”

    Sallam’s father was born in Ramle, in what is now central Israel.

    Most of its Arab residents fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 conflict, as were more than 760,000 Palestinians across the country.

    Many of their descendants live to this day in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

    More than half of Jordan’s population of about 10 million people are of Palestinian origin, the result of mass displacement in 1948 and during the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

    Last year, Israeli director Alon Schwarz faced backlash over his documentary on an alleged 1948 massacre of Palestinians in Tantura, a Mediterranean village in the northwest of what is now Israel.

    Calls have mounted in recent years, including among Israeli activists, for greater transparency about the conduct of nascent Israeli forces during the 1948 conflict.

    AMMAN: Jordanian film “Farha”, vehemently criticised in Israel, is based on true events and represents “only a drop in the ocean” of Palestinian suffering, director Darin J. Sallam told AFP.

    Released last month on Netflix, “Farha” depicts atrocities against Palestinians during the 1948 conflict following Israel’s creation, which Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”.

    The Arabic-language film tells the story of a Palestinian teenager, Farha, whose village comes under attack by Israeli forces.

    Her father hides her and, through a crack in a door, she witnesses the execution a family of Palestinian civilians, including two girls.

    Sallam, 35, said the plot for her first full-length feature was inspired by a story told to her by her mother, about a Palestinian woman named Radiyeh.

    The film recounts “the story of a girl who had been forced to abandon her dreams because of events she had no control over”, Sallam said.

    “Farha” featured in the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival and has won a dozen awards in other festivals.

    In Israel, where discussion of alleged atrocities during the 1948 war remains largely taboo, officials condemned Netflix over the decision to stream the film.

    “I wanted to open the world’s eyes to this pivotal moment in the history… and to show that this land was not without people,” Sallam said, of what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories.

    “Rather, it was a land with people who had lives, dreams, hopes and history.”

    ‘I am Farha’

    The film was shot in the northern Jordan towns of Ajlun and Al-Fuhais, which resemble the Palestinian village where Farha’s story begins.

    The teenage girl tries to persuade her father to let her complete her studies in the city, prepares for a friend’s wedding, and picks figs before her village is attacked.

    Sallam said she avoided showing violence, with the exception of the unarmed family’s killing.

    “This scene, which shook the Israeli government, is only a drop in the ocean of the suffering of millions of Palestinians during the Nakba,” she said.

    Sallam called for more filmmakers to explore this painful chapter in Palestinian history, which “almost never appears in cinema”.

    Her mother, of Syrian origin, had heard Radiyeh’s story at a refugee camp in that country and passed it on to her, “and I decided to make a film and share it”.

    “Radiyeh had been locked up by her father who feared for her, and when she was finally able to come out of hiding she went to Syria,” Sallam said. “That’s where she told the story to my mother.”

    The filmmaker said she had “lost all contact with this woman”, a resident of the war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, north of Damascus, since fighting in Syria began in 2011.

    After one screening of the film in the United States, an audience member spoke to Sallam.

    “A woman aged in her eighties who had survived the Nakba told me: ‘I am Farha’”, she said.

    ‘Lies’

    Former Israeli minister Avigdor Lieberman, who had served in government until Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power last month, said in November the film’s “whole purpose is to create a false pretence and incite against Israeli soldiers”.

    Chili Tropper, Israel’s former culture minister, said “Farha” shows “lies and libels”.

    For Sallam, whose father is Palestinian, “denying the Nakba is denying my existence, denying the tragedy of millions of people.”

    “My own father survived the Nakba. He… fled to Jordan with his parents.”

    Sallam’s father was born in Ramle, in what is now central Israel.

    Most of its Arab residents fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 conflict, as were more than 760,000 Palestinians across the country.

    Many of their descendants live to this day in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

    More than half of Jordan’s population of about 10 million people are of Palestinian origin, the result of mass displacement in 1948 and during the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

    Last year, Israeli director Alon Schwarz faced backlash over his documentary on an alleged 1948 massacre of Palestinians in Tantura, a Mediterranean village in the northwest of what is now Israel.

    Calls have mounted in recent years, including among Israeli activists, for greater transparency about the conduct of nascent Israeli forces during the 1948 conflict.