### Palestine '36 (2025) I'll start at the end: you should watch this movie. It's flawed. But it’s also fresh, ambitious, informative, and well-produced. [Palestine '36](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_36) follows a large cast of Palestinian and British characters through the events of the [1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936%E2%80%931939_Arab_revolt_in_Palestine) - not the first, but the largest, broadest, and best-organized campaign of Palestinian resistance against [the Yishuv](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yishuv) (the Zionist settlement project in Palestine) and the British Mandate authorities that supported it. --- ###### What Works: The movie captures stark contrasts between urban and rural life in 1930s Palestine. Common narratives tend to emphasize the countryside, home to the most enduring symbols of Palestinian identity: the olive tree, the [kufiyyeh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keffiyeh), food and folklore. But Palestine's cities - growing hubs of political, intellectual and cultural activity at the time - are often overlooked. I was glad the film gave them their due. I was equally glad to hear the rural, *fallahi* Palestinian dialect, still used by my own, extended family members, on the big screen. *Palestine '36* honestly portrays the deep rifts that existed within Palestinian society at the time: between wealthy landowners and landless peasants, between urban and rural populations, and between supporters and opponents of the rebellion. It tackled these internal complexities, without glossing them over. The film draws a clear line between modern Israeli military doctrine and British-imperial counterinsurgency tactics - specifically, the use of overwhelming, disproportionate, and often indiscriminate violence to suppress and deter indigenous mobilization. This is a topic of [growing academic and public interest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_Violence), and director [Annemarie Jacir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annemarie_Jacir) was explicit about her [wanting to contribute to this conversation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7wA___WnhI). [Orde Wingate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orde_Wingate) - an outrageously racist, senior British officer known for his brutality - is rightly cast as the film’s central villain (played by [Robert Aramayo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aramayo)). Wingate trained some of Israel's highest ranking military leaders before statehood: figures like [Moshe Dayan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan) (future chief of staff, defense minister) and [Yigan Allon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yigal_Allon) (general, government minister, deputy prime minister). The film spends some time on him, exposing the extent of British colonial violence to broader audiences. I was skeptical that the film could convincingly recreate 1930s Palestine, but it did. Through meticulous costume and set design, and the clever use of colorized archival footage, it successfully suspended my disbelief. It was very well produced, and probably expensive: there's an elaborate (+awesome) train heist sequence, for example, which appears to have been filmed on location, or in a neighboring Arab country (I'm no CGI expert, but that looked real to me). How and where did they film that? That said, the obvious use of AI to upscale archival footage segments was distracting. The colorization was tasteful, but I'd take lower-res, true-to-life footage over uncanny, morphing faces and hands. --- ###### Not as good: My biggest issue with Palestine '36 is that it never properly sets the stage. It drops the viewer in 1936, only briefly overviewing of the looming dangers of Zionist expansion. Palestinians react, are met with violence, which catalyzes the Revolt. It's not wrong, per se, but it's overly simplistic. At times, it ends up sensationalizing Palestinians as perfect victims, flattening a complex movement. The film would have been more historically grounded, more convincing, and more emotionally resonant if it had spent more time contextualizing the Revolt, exploring the full scope of Palestinian agency, the scale of Zionist expansion and militarism, and the earlier waves of disorganized Palestinian violence (I'm thinking of the [1921 Jaffa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_riots) and [1929 Hebron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre) riots, in particular). By transparently avoiding these important, and at times uncomfortable milestones, the movie risks losing the viewer when portraying the very real horrors of Wingate & Co. At its core, the Palestinian struggle is against apartheid; against the ethnic-hierarchical logic of a settler-colonial movement. As such, on a fundamental level - setting this or that organization's tactics aside - this struggle requires no justification beyond the facts. Our best bet is to stick to the facts, mistakes and all. I think we do apartheid a favor when we ignore them. - *[The Battle of Algiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Algiers) comes to mind as an example of a film that does this right - narrating the Algerian Revolution as a fundamentally struggle, without ignoring the moral costs it incurred.* Relatedly: the film includes no Jewish settlers as characters; only glimpses of them, beyond the fence. This was done purposefully, to symbolize settler-colonial exclusion. Many Palestinians - especially in the countryside - had basically never interacted with settlers, who lived in fortified, segregated enclaves. My grandmother, for example, remembers British officers much more vividly than Jewish neighbors from nearby settlements. Still, I think that the narrative would have been enriched by including the Yishuv leaders, as well as ordinary settlers as characters. And a couple of smaller issues: - In the end, there's a scene where innocent Palestinians choose death over displacement. This decision isn't challenged - not really - and so, the movie ends up glorifying martyrdom; a common, and I think a harmful, trope in Palestinian media. There is no glory in death. - The story is lost amid the large, ensemble cast. I suspect this was also purposeful: there is no single hero in resistance; anti-colonial movements are inherently collective endeavors. Still, the narrative could have benefited from focusing on one or a couple of characters. --- That said, the movie's redeeming qualities outweigh the drawbacks. Give it a watch.