{"id":9723,"date":"2023-01-04T21:51:29","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T02:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9723"},"modified":"2023-01-04T21:51:31","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T02:51:31","slug":"farha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/04\/farha\/","title":{"rendered":"Farha."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Farha<\/em> was the Jordanian submission for this year\u2019s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and it\u2019s the first full-length film for Palestinian director Darin Sallam, who had been trying to make the movie for nearly a decade. Based on a story passed down for over 70 years about a 14-year-old Palestinian girl\u2019s harrowing experience during the Nakba in 1948, it works with a very simple plot and strong lead performance, but is also hemmed in by the director\u2019s commitment to the original narrative. It’s currently streaming on Netflix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farha is the girl\u2019s name, and as the film opens in mid-May, 1948, we see her playing with friends in their village in Palestine as the families there prepare for the arranged marriage of one of their daughters. Farha begs her father to send her to secondary school instead of marrying her off, and he eventually agrees, but while the paper is still in her hand, gunfire erupts as the British Mandate ends and Israeli troops threaten the village. Farha\u2019s father tries to send her away with a neighbor who is driving his own family to safety, but Farha jumps out of the car and returns to her father\u2019s side, so he puts her in a storeroom, locking the door and telling her he\u2019ll return for her as soon as it\u2019s safe. She ends up trapped in the room for several days, witnessing some of the horrors of the war through the keyhole, including an atrocity committed by Israeli soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farha <\/em>is both a coming-of-age story and an anti-war film, one that has upset Israeli authorities because it shows Israeli Defense Forces soldiers, one of whom wears a yarmulke, committing acts of senseless, gratuitous violence (albeit off-screen \u2013 we hear it, Farha sees it). The story takes place during the Nakba, or \u201ccatastrophe,\u201d which refers to the displacement of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from what had been British Palestine and would later become independent Israel. The displacement had already begun, with a civil war starting after the announcement of a plan to partition the territory between Jews and Arabs six months earlier. Israel declared independence on May 14th<\/sup>, shortly before the British Mandate was to end, and within days, four Arab nations invaded to try to abolish the Jewish state. Farha <\/em>doesn\u2019t give a specific date, but it\u2019s at least well into the Nakba given that some neighbors try to get Farha\u2019s father to come fight the Israelis with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This movie is tense, as Sallam films nearly all of it from within the storeroom; we only hear what Farha hears and see some of what she sees. Any noise from outside is a threat, and when those IDF troops arrive, every second could be the end. This would be a terrible experience for anyone, but for a 14-year-old girl who was just hoping to continue her education, it\u2019s a horrific way to come of age. Sallam shows the viewer without telling \u2013 there\u2019s no narration and after the first fifteen minutes there\u2019s very little dialogue. Once the door closes and locks, life happens to Farha, and she is powerless to stop any of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sallam\u2019s choice to keep the viewer in that room works by centering Farha\u2019s emotions, primarily fear, thus keeping the conflict personal rather than allowing it to spill over into something bigger and more showy (e.g., adding more on-screen violence, turning into a polemic against Israel or Great Britain). The viewer experiences everything through Farha, including her terror and her helplessness. Farha\u2019s plight stands in as a synecdoche for that of Palestinians as a whole \u2013 they were, in a sense, trapped in their homeland, with Israel fighting on one side and taking much of their land, while the Arab nations fought Israel sort of on the Palestinians\u2019 behalf, while the people themselves did fight but were by far the weakest force of the three, while more than half of the Palestinian Arab population was displaced by the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farha <\/em>is a little long for its content; there\u2019s barely enough here for its 92 minutes, with arguably too much time showing Farha alone in the storeroom, although, again, Sallam is sticking to a specific oral history. It could have been 10 minutes shorter and perhaps been even more powerful, though. First-time actor Karam Taher is excellent as Farha, as she must be for this film to work, and I imagine we\u2019ll see much more of her given the reception this film received in Toronto and positive reviews elsewhere. It didn\u2019t make the shortlist of fifteen titles for the Academy Award, which I fear will relegate it to afterthought status, but at the very least, if you have Netflix, it\u2019s worth seeking out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Farha was the Jordanian submission for this year\u2019s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and it\u2019s the first full-length film for Palestinian director Darin Sallam, who had been trying to make the movie for nearly a decade. Based on a story passed down for over 70 years about a 14-year-old Palestinian girl\u2019s harrowing experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1290,1321,215],"class_list":["post-9723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2022-movies","tag-jordanian-films","tag-movies","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9724,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9723\/revisions\/9724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}