TEHRAN- “The Teacher” is feature debut of Palestinian-British writer-director Farah Nabulsi, which was shot in 2022. The film highlights not just the countless ways the Israeli occupying forces and settlers dehumanize and abuse Palestinians in the West Bank, but the traumatic toll it continues to take. 

It had its MENA premiere at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and took home the best actor award and the main jury prize.

The film is the latest entry in the canon of films chronicling the contemporary Palestinian experience under occupation and dives into many themes that have been the subject of global discussion as the conflict rages on, from homes being unjustly demolished to settlers burning olive trees and getting away with murder. 

"The Teacher" follows Palestinian teacher Basem (Saleh Bakri), who acts as a father figure to two of his students, Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri) and Adam (Muhammad Abed El Rahman), amidst turmoil in the West Bank. Upon meeting British volunteer social worker Lisa (Imogen Poots) at his school, Basem struggles to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance and his emotional support for Yacoub and Adam with the chance of a new romantic relationship.

Real-life inspiration

In an interview with the Tehran Times, Nabulsi explained that the story itself is the accumulation of various real-life events that have taken place in militarily occupied and colonized Palestine, coupled with her visual and verbal imagination as a filmmaker.

“Despite being born, raised and educated in the UK, my heritage on both my parents’ sides is very much Palestinian,” she highlighted.

The director mentioned that the story of the film was inspired by the painful memories of the Palestinians. “Over the years I’ve met with and had numerous conversations with Palestinians who have experienced first-hand many of the absurd and cruel things that also inspired the screenplay and take place in the film, some of which I’ve even witnessed myself.”

“Such as the home demolitions, the Palestinian child prisoners in Israeli military detention, and Israeli settler vandalism and violence,” Nabulsi added.

In part of the story, U.S. attorney Simon Cohen (Stanley Townsend) and his wife Rachel have flown into the region after their Israeli army soldier son Nathaniel was kidnapped by Palestinian resistance fighters.

It's a sub-plot inspired by former Israeli regime soldier Gilad Shalit who was held captive for over five years. Nabulsi said one of the stories she came across during her travels to Palestine is the story of Gilad Shalit. He was an Israeli occupation soldier who was captured in 2006 by Palestinian freedom fighters, and was released in 2011 as part of a historic prisoner exchange deal for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.

The director remembered when she first heard this story. She thought, “Wow! – one person for over 1,000 others! What a crazy imbalance in value for human life."

Lived experiences 

Basem is a lonely English language teacher working at a school filled with boys who have been brutally held in Israeli detention centers. One of those boys is Yacoub; a teen whose innocence was lost after being imprisoned for throwing stones at a protest.

Flashbacks to Basem's personal family tragedy paint a deeper portrait of the too-frequent familial loss felt by Palestinians under Israeli occupation. His 16-year-old son was arrested alongside Yacoub but was tried as an adult by an Israeli court and given a sentence of eight years.

“In terms of Basem El-Saleh, the teacher himself, he is someone who is not perfect; he is dealing with so much pain and loss and is looking for a way to forgive himself for what happened to his son,” said Nabulsi.

The director of “The Teacher” explained that she wanted Basem to be someone the audience could get really close to; so close they could almost hear his heart beating. 

“I wanted you to understand him as a real person, in a way that might encourage you to look at the current circumstances and the average Palestinian man differently to how the media presents things,” she noted.

Nabulsi also mentioned the influence of her own lived experiences in the creation of “Lisa”, a British social worker.  “When writing a story, you go where your creativity takes you – but I think no matter what you will always be influenced consciously or subconsciously by your own lived experiences.”

The director stated that she has spent a lot of time on the ground in Palestine and she can say that all across the West Bank (and especially Jerusalem), there are a lot of internationals present there, whether they are with an NGO, the UN, volunteers, international observers, or tourists even. 

“I know a number of real-life Lisa’s and so I like that she is a “way into the film” for some people,” Nabulsi added.

Emotional challenges

Set and filmed in the West Bank, “The Teacher” is built upon a strong sense of place, both physical and, in terms of generational loss, historical.

Nabulsi told the Tehran Times about the difficulties of shooting in the West Bank. She pointed out that, other than the usual practical and logistical toils and turbulences of making an independent film – tight budgets, locations not working out at the last minute, running out of time, and so on – when shooting in the West Bank of Palestine, you also have the ongoing settler colonization and military occupation taking place in real time around you to contend with.

This presents issues like Israeli checkpoints or roads being outright closed, which is very frustrating in the filmmaking process.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker mentioned that the biggest challenge for her was the mental and emotional one. “You’re making a film where the story is set in a harsh reality, while shooting in that reality, with that reality unfolding around you in real time. It’s quite convoluted. Like during the start of our shooting period, illegal Israeli settlers were burning olive trees in the nearby village of Burin, where the teacher is actually from in the film. The burning of the olive groves is something that also takes place in the story itself.”

The director of “The Teacher” said Israeli regime even started to drop bombs on Gaza again at one point during production, which really heightens tensions all over Palestine even if they were filming in the West Bank.

“For me the challenge was more the mental and emotional toll of taking all this in, while trying to remain upbeat, make a film in that environment, continue to lead as a director, but also deal with the pressure of doing those injustices taking place in reality around us, justice in the film itself.”

Nabulsi mentioned another example of these mental challenges, which was finding a couple and their six young children one morning at 5 am on her way to the film set, standing on the side of the road in front of the rubble of their freshly demolished home; something that the director said has been portrayed in the film.

A 30-year wait 

Nabulsi’s 2020 short “The Present”, which also starred Bakri and similarly explored similar tensions in The Occupied Territories, was nominated for an Oscar and won a BAFTA. 

The director stated the whole journey of “The Present” from its initial premiere at Clermont-Ferrand, to all the Jury and Audience awards and then finally the Oscar nomination and the BAFTA win provided momentum for “The Teacher” and its success so far.

She mentioned that since COVID-19 was happening throughout much of that time period, the many months of lockdown allowed her the space and time to write “The Teacher” and have it ready. Therefore, she was able to take advantage of the momentum from “The Present”. 

“The most defining moment that felt wonderful, but I didn’t realize just how important it was at the time in terms of propelling “The Present”, was the Audience Award at Clermont-Ferrand, where the film had its World Premiere,” said Nabulsi.

The Oscar-nominated filmmaker has, in general, received wonderful reactions from Palestinians who have seen "The Teacher" so far.

Nabulsi told the Tehran Times about the most unique experience she had regarding the Palestinian response to the film. 

“The most meaningful moment for me was when a Palestinian man, originally from Gaza, stood up during a Q&A session, thanked me from the bottom of his heart and said that he had been waiting 30 years to see a film like this! That touched me in the deepest way, especially at a time like this as we witness the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

“The Teacher” poses considerable questions about the systemic oppression of Palestinians, the occupation of Palestine, and how easily violence begets violence when history keeps repeating. There’s also criticism directed at U.S. lawmakers’ permissive attitude about Israeli regime behavior.

AH/SAB