“The year you were born,” reads the opening title card to Palestine 36. It’s a daunting prescription that also invites the viewer into the story. Director Annemarie Jacir’s film doesn’t follow just one character, nor is it stuck in the second-person, so it’s unlikely that the “you” is meant to refer to any of the film’s many pre-Nakba Palestinian characters. And while Jacir’s film is perhaps the most comprehensive and valuable narrative drama to survey the origins of Palestinian subjugation in the Levant, it also doesn’t start, strictly speaking, from the most commonly accepted naissance of the issue: the 1917 Balfour Declaration. What exactly is being born in 1936 though? Arab and Palestinian resistance to the (pre-statehood) Israeli settler occupation of their land.
The historical consensus on the Great Palestinian Revolt is that it began in 1936 and lasted through 1939. To oversimplify, the resistance started with economic and political resistance within the system established by the British Mandate (or, in some cases, carried over by the British from the Ottoman). The general strike lasted from April to October and at the time could have been the longest general labor strike in economic history. The resistance then became violent, tearing apart the cohesion of the Arab community in the process. Two forms of resistance take center in Palestine 36.
The cast of characters here is intentionally vast, covering all facets and political persuasions in 1930s Palestinian life. A few of the more important roles include Fr. Boulos (Jalal Altawil), an Eastern Rite Catholic priest (which means he can marry and have children); the wealthy colluder Amir (Dhafer L’Abidine); Khouloud (Yasmine Al Massri), Amir’s wife and a popular left-wing newspaper writer with a male pseudonym; and Yusuf the farmer (Karim Daoud Anaya). Together they represent the many faces of Palestine: the Christian and the Muslim, the farmer and the businessman, the husband and wife, the militant rebels and the traitors. Jacir and her editor Tania Reddin carefully edit Christian and Muslim religious rituals in sequence with each other, as if to emphasize the shared destiny and political aspirations of the two groups of worshippers.
Palestinian history broadly is integral to Jacir’s comprehensive account of the conflict’s origins: the discovery of illegal weapons shipments, the establishment of the Palestine Broadcasting Service, the Peel Commission, settlers setting fires to clear fields, and the deportation of leaders to the Seychelles. Those looking to better understand the historical context for the modern ethnic cleansing of Gaza will find Jacir’s film to be a valuable resource. It’s at its most powerful in the visualization of the land as fully Palestinian. Jacir and her team of three cinematographers barely show the Jewish settlers on screen; the British, and their military cars and imperial suits, creep into the picture much more frequently. The archival footage Jacir stitches into the narrative showing life in 1930s Palestine reiterates just how Palestinian the land is: in language, in religion, in clothing. Of course, anyone who is paying attention and knows anything about the history of the Levant already knows this, but it is another, more powerful thing to see it. The steppe terraces of Battir, a complex irrigation system carved into the valleys over generations and now recognized by UNESCO, communicate this most effectively. (An elder member of the community makes sure to point this out, in case it wasn’t clear already.) The Palestinians have been here so long that they have changed the earth itself; the settlers burn it as if it needs cleansed before they can start anew.
The face of the enemy here is the cruel Captain Wingate (Robert Aramayo). Liam Cunningham and Jeremy Irons also play supporting roles as British villains, putting their star power to action in support of Palestine. As his film premieres at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, Cunningham is on the international flotilla trying to break Israel’s blockade. There is a nod in the film to the British’s handling of Ireland, and one wonders if this nod of solidarity was inspired by Cunningham’s real-life solidarity. The most intriguing Brit though is Thomas Hopkins (Billy Howle), the one who takes the correct moral position and becomes closer and closer to the Arab community he holds power over. He becomes complicit in the violence when he decides to leave Palestine and retire his political advocacy for them. His beliefs don’t change; he is just so frustrated with his inability to effectuate change through his superiors that he quits the cause. It’s tough not to think of Thomas as the modern analogue: it’s one thing to have the right beliefs, it’s another thing to act on them.
Published as part of TIFF 2025 — Dispatch 3.
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