The Naive Drama of West Bank Story Salt of This Sea

Details

Salt of This Sea
Directed by Annemarie Jacir
Lorber Films
Opens August 13, Quad Cinema

Related Content

• 'Talking Landscape: Early Media Work, 1974-1984'
  February 8, 2012
• Mini Wine Growlers Coming Soon to Brooklyn Winery
  May 22, 2012
• Bloomberg's Budget Cuts Brooklyn's After-School Programs in Half
  May 20, 2012
• Matzo Balls And Disco Balls: Pairing Great GoogaMooga's Food And Music Offerings
  May 18, 2012
• Welcome to Beer UP: A (New!) Weekly Examination of, Well, Beer
  May 17, 2012

More About

• Annemarie Jacir
• Brooklyn (New York City)
• Chet Baker
• Ramallah
• Riyad Ideis

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Soraya (Suheir Hammad), a beautiful young Brooklyn-born Palestinian, is met with stonewalling and blunt hostility when she arrives in Israel to throw down a gauntlet and reclaim the house and money her grandfather lost when he was forced out in 1948. Stranded without money in Ramallah after her visa expires, she joins forces with a handsome cab driver (played by Saleh Bakri, last seen romancing an airport sales agent with vintage Chet Baker in The Band's Visit) and an easygoing filmmaker (Riyad Ideis) in a bank heist whose proceeds will carry them on a nostalgic road trip through the land they see as theirs. Annemarie Jacir, who was raised in Saudi Arabia, directs with flair and loving attention to the wild, damaged beauty of the contested landscape. But Soraya's rebellious bursts of rage come off more like the tantrums of a spoiled princess than the legitimate anger of an emerging activist. Salt of This Sea is a sexy, good-looking, intelligently paced drama, but, politically, it is a loaded dice that—pausing to stomp with close to equal contempt on the Israeli peace movement and (as Jacir sees it) the passive fatalism of the Palestinian old guard—moves inexorably backward to perpetual victimhood.