Watched this film purely by accident on King Faiasel Specialist Hospital (closed circuit) television, while working in Saudi Arabia as an expat. As a lifelong, card-carrying romantic, I was reduced to mouth-agape awe by the extreme sensitivity of this film in portraying love against a backdrop of insensate fate. Regardless of what you think (or thought) of David Lean's portrayal of Pasternak's epic ZHIVAGO (for me it was one of the best of its genre), 'JAMILA' will fill you with a crushing, melancholic appreciation of the exquisitely fragile nature of human experience, as one human heart cleaves to another in the essential chaos of life. This is a film I would truly want to have on my film library shelf, were I to have few others.
