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This year, with some mighty titles from the Maghreb evaluated alongside the rest of continental Africa, the competitive potential of the Middle East lineup handicapped here may seem a tad diminished. Nevertheless, the territory boasts a possible short-list contender in Palestinian helmer Elia Suleiman’s wry travelog “It Must Be Heaven,” which nabbed the international critics award at 2019 Cannes.

Back in 2003, Suleiman’s second feature, “Divine Intervention,” marked the first of 12 submissions made by Palestine over the years. During that time, the entries resulted in two nominations, both for films helmed by Hany Abu-Assad: “Paradise Now” (2005) and “Omar” (2013). Now, Suleiman, like Abu-Assad, is recognized as an elder statesman of Palestinian filmmaking as well as an accomplished auteur whose films continue to bear witness to the surreal and the absurd in Palestinian life at home and abroad. Although his work is better-known in Europe than in the U.S., “It Must Be Heaven...

There’s a lot of laughing and a lot of tears in Finding Farideh, a documentary about a determined 38-year-old Dutch woman, Eline Farideh Koning, who decides to visit her birthplace in a pilgrimage city in northeast Iran and search for her birth parents. Shot with a gentle, sensitive touch, it takes the viewer into territory rarely explored in contemporary Iranian films, deep into the heart of the traditional family and its values. Far from being stiff-backed, religious hard-liners, they are open and even gushing as they reach out to one of their own who has come back into the fold....

There’s a lot of laughing and a lot of tears in Finding Farideh, a documentary about a determined 38-year-old Dutch woman, Eline Farideh Koning, who decides to visit her birthplace in a pilgrimage city in northeast Iran and search for her birth parents. Shot with a gentle, sensitive touch, it takes the viewer into territory rarely explored in contemporary Iranian films, deep into the heart of the traditional family and its values. Far from being stiff-backed, religious hard-liners, they are open and even gushing as they reach out to one of their own who has come back into the fold....