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Véronique Lange

Maha Haj’s Upshot takes home 2 awards from 77th Locarno Film Festival
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After a successful world premiere at the 77th Locarno Film Festival – where the film competed at the Pardi di Domani – Corti d'Autore Competition – Maha Haj's poignant Palestinian short Upshot took home with the Pardino d'Oro Swiss Life for Best Auteur Short Film Award and the Junior Jury Award for the Best Auteur Short Film at the Swiss festival's closing ceremony on Saturday Aug 17, where Haj herself received the award.

The film received widespread audience and critical acclaim, with Samuel Lembo of Sinistra.ch saying, “[The film] is a punch to the gut and a strong blow to the heart. [It's] a roar for Palestine at Locarno.”

Meanwhile, film critic Mohamed Reda described the film as “one of the best films [he's] seen this year,” gushing about it in The Middle East Newspaper and praising its acting, comparing it to a “harmonious musical duet.”

“Everything fits in its place, and the rhythm is fluid,...
See full article at AsianMoviePulse
  • 8/19/2024
  • by Suzie Cho
  • AsianMoviePulse
Film Review: Upshot (2024) by Maha Haj
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Palestinian filmmaker Maha Haj seems to have found the recipe for success in the festival circuit, since, after the multi screened and awarded “Mediterranean Fever”, her latest work, the short “Upshot” went home with the Pardino d'Oro Swiss Life for Best Auteur Short Film Award and the Junior Jury Award for Best Auteur Short Film in Locarno. It is also a film that highlights both her rising competence as a filmmaker and the progress of short filmmaking in Asia in general.

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Suleiman and Lubna, a retired doctor and a housewife, are a couple who have retreated to an isolated farm, in a fashion that many people in the Mediterranean tend to do when they get older. They spend their days tending the fields (him) and the house (her) while, as most couples their age, bickering about their children, whom they...
See full article at AsianMoviePulse
  • 8/19/2024
  • by Panos Kotzathanasis
  • AsianMoviePulse
Film Review: Mediterranean Fever (2022) by Maha Haj
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The biggest problem filmmakers who shoot comedies face is that it is quite difficult to retain the hilarity and keep the audience laughing for the duration of a feature. The solution most find is to switch to drama at some point, with the movies quite frequently ending up as such despite their initial premises. Maha Haj, however, manages to both retain the comedy until the end, and to transition smoothly towards drama after a point in impressive fashion, through a great script that won the best screenplay prize at Cannes (Un Certain Regard) in 2022.

Mediterranean Fever screened at Warsaw Film Festival

40+ aspiring writer Waleed’s life is in shambles. He cannot finish his novel, no matter what he does, and his chronic depression is making things difficult for both him and his family, including his wife, teenage daughter and younger son. His wife wants one more child but he cannot even hear about it,...
See full article at AsianMoviePulse
  • 10/31/2022
  • by Panos Kotzathanasis
  • AsianMoviePulse
Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953)
Palestine’s Oscar® Entry for the Best International Feature ‘It Must Be Heaven’ 2019
Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953)
Palestine’s Oscar® 2019 Entry for the Best International Feature ‘It Must Be Heaven’Elia Suleiman’s ‘It Must Be Heaven’, sweetly surreal, as whimsical as a Jacques Tati film, and with a hilarious cameo with Gael Garcia Bernal introducing Suleiman to his agent, wryly observes our human race.

Es escapes from Palestine, putting away his parents’ effects, and sets out to seek an alternative homeland only to find that the absolute absurdities of his home in Palestine are equal to those in “the west”. Palestine trails behind him and the promise of a new life turns into a comedy of drole misteps taking him from Paris to New York and back to what must be heaven.

From the award-winning director Elia Suleiman, this comic saga explores identity, nationality and belonging, in which Suleiman asks the fundamental question: where is the place we can truly call home?

Elia Sulieman in ‘It...
See full article at Sydney's Buzz
  • 11/9/2019
  • by Sydney Levine
  • Sydney's Buzz
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