Of Land and Bread

Ehab Tarabieh, 2019, 89′

In Arabic, Hebrew and English with French subtitles

Of Land and Bread begins with a Palestinian farmer who is forced to fight for his own land. It belongs to Israel, claims a Jewish man who plans to grow grain here. “You will all be our slaves,” he says. “If you’re found worthy.” This is but one of the many examples of bullying and humiliation that pervades the lives of Palestinians. We see dozens of short films made with cameras provided by the human rights organization B’Tselem, and then edited by director Ehab Tarabieh into this angry montage of provocations. Military personnel seem to love making things difficult for Palestinians and their children, while Israeli citizens continue to stoke the flames by throwing rocks and shouting racist chants. As the film unfolds, things go from bad to worse. By editing together so many documents of the Palestinians’ awful reality, Tarabieh makes the feeling of injustice creep deep under our skin.

The screening will be followed by a pay-what-you-can (vegan) dinner organised by the Cantine 100 dal – all profits will go to Palestinian families. The aim of this event is to support four people stranded in Gaza. Moataz , Yazan, Amjad and Zain are currently living through the repercussions of Western colonial policies, which lacerate civilian populations on a daily basis.

Ehab Tarabieh, born in 1982 in Majdal Shams, a village in the occupied Golan Heights, is a filmmaker and violinist trained in Damascus and the Czech Republic. Politically active from a young age due to the Israeli occupation, he turned to cinema to document life in Palestine. Among his notable works, *The Forgotten* won Best Short Film at the Tribeca Film Festival in Doha in 2012, and *Smile, and the World Will Smile Back* (2014) was selected for the Berlinale. His first feature film, *Of Land and Bread* (2019), delves into the realities of occupation.