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Review by davidehrlich ★★★★

“Everything is political. Nothing is innocent. Anything you do or say will be interpreted.”

Elia Suleiman’s Chronicle of a Disappearance is a fragmented portrait of modern Palestinian identity, structured in such a way as to implicitly articulate the fissures and false unities of the national character. Suleiman explores the role that politics and national identity play in the daily life of Palestinians both in Nazareth and in Jerusalem, his film ultimately cohering as an attempt to reveal the fundamentally performative nature of both, and how such an inertia of character struggles to maintain itself in the millennial era and the nascent digital age.

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"Do you see that? That is where Jesus is said to have walked on water. Now it’s a gastronomic sewer filled with excrement, shit of American and German tourists who eat chinese food. It forms a crust on the surface of the lake. Anyone can walk on water and perform miracles now."

Chronicle of a disappearance, the title is actually the perfect way to tell how this film is put together. On the one hand, it refers to a chronological enumeration of events, represented here in the film by separate humorous fragments about daily life in Israel-Palestine, which build up in the final scenes to “the slow dissapearance” of the Palestinians in “the new land” of Israel. On the other…

2

Israeli soldiers running around like headless chickens, humiliated woman sardonically humiliating others without satisfaction, eyes echoing deep melancholy, Suleiman wanders around like tired artist whose voice isn't heard anymore (ironically this is his second feature) and countless nameless people watching their days go by (those last images basically seem like a statement that somebody else owns them). Sometimes camera takes its own ways, looking at the nameless roads and what is beyond, music playing on the background going on its centuries long wish. I think this could basically be the only way to portray the absurdity of everyday life and the barriers of it in Arab/Jewish land - we never see the future, there is no speculation about what will be but rather what is now. Of course there's wish of being able to live in peace but it is never really given sentimental tone or space. The images speak for themselves.

Review by Will Sloan Liked

"To my mother and father, the last homeland."

Review by jrhovind ★★★★

“This has been a land of conflict for thousands of years.” “That’s what makes it interesting, yes. But exhausting, too.” Palestinian life as a kind of perpetual waiting; waiting for foreign tourists to buy the tap water packaged as holy water at the Holyland souvenir shop, waiting for someone in Jerusalem to actually let you rent their apartment, waiting for some day when you won’t have to be an exile in your own homeland. But until that day comes, life still keeps happening. For all their obvious stylistic differences, a film that consistently made me think of Hou’s historical films (as if filtered through a Kaurismäki-esque deadpan sensibility). Characters are frequently framed in doorways and windows, entrapment as just an…

Review by Jaime Rebanal 🇵🇸 ★★★★★ Liked

This film's title carries many meanings - first being the fact that was a project made following writer-director Elia Suleiman's own return to Palestine from New York, but also because it feels like the place he once saw as his homeland has slowly been wiped from the public consciousness. Supposedly, this is a film that some would describe as being "about nothing," because comprises of a series of vignettes all about people living within Palestine. But the fact that Suleiman is showing so little happening ultimately ends up making Chronicle of a Disappearance so powerful, in that it is a film all about the political unrest brought on forth by the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

It's a film that captures…

Review by Lee Does Not Exist सब्बे सत्ता सुखी होन्तु ★★★★★ Liked

Today, 75 years after the Nakba started, Palestinian students fly their flag in resistance at Tel Aviv University

Meanwhile, actionists in Britain are currently occupying and shutting down Israeli weapons factories

From the river to sea, Palestine will be free

Review by Chris 🍉 ★★★★½ Liked

the title card for Part II drops, then cuts to a shot in the middle of a road. suddenly the camera starts moving, freed of the reigns it was stuck in for the entirety of Part I as the film transitions from domestic Palestinian vignettes to more explicitly political and ideological ones. its a transition that's seamless yet startling at the same time, if that makes any sense. all of this to say I was immediately reminded of bi gan's long day's journey into night and its legendary title card drop... gorgeous. i think elia suleiman may become one of my favorite directors. an insane feature debut

Review by Angelica Jade Bastién🪼🌷 ★★★½ Liked

Elia Suleiman don’t miss! I was very curious to watch this after falling in love with his later, more recent work like The Time That Remains, which gives Saleh Bakri a delicious role to flex his sculptural acting style. I was delighted and surprised to find that his voice as a director/writer/actor was so well-formed earlier on. His character’s quietude, the vignettes that bleed into each other and feel part of the same quilt of life, the piquant framing and quiet lushness of the color palette. This man knows how to make an enrapturing, slice of life movie in ways many motherfuckers could learn from and enjoy.

Review by Zack Mosley ★★★★ Liked

In the midst of Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem and siege on Gaza, the Arab Film & Media Institute released a free 10-day streaming retrospective of four films by Palestinian writer-director Elia Suleiman. I had already intended to watch Elia Suleiman's works after reviewing four Israeli films (POLICEMAN, THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER, and SYNONYMS by Nadav Lapid and also Ari Folman's WALTZ WITH BASHIR) recently, so the timing of this promotion was fortuitous for me, despite the galvanizing circumstances that prompted the release. If you're in the US, Canada, or Palestine, you can watch all four films for free/pay what you want here before May 30.

CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE eventually gets around to fulfilling the promise of its title,…

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:There's a lot of people who compare your work to that of Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati. But, the first time when I saw your films, I was rather more reminded of certain Czech novels. Are there any influences that extract from literature when you conceive your sketches?

SULEIMAN: Yes. Influence, I don’t know… well, let me be more precise. Because—I don’t know if you’ve read that too—but I’m always saying the same thing over and over: I was never influenced by Buster Keaton, or by Jacques Tati.

: Exactly. Yet people still ask you about that.

SULEIMAN: Maybe they don't know that I've answered this before, but the fact is that I understand where they’re coming from. Because yes,…

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Don’t know what it’s like to live in a place like this, but I have to imagine that this film does a perfect job the restless, aimless feeling that a period of statelessness feels like. This film is anything but aimless though, it has a ridiculous amount of bite to it, drifting between a laid back slice of life hangout film to a dark comedy bordering on slapstick. Like Richard Linklater’s Slacker set in a state of political turmoil. It oozes style too, but it isn’t too overt or tactless with it. Don’t know why this is solely labeled as a drama, it was funny as hell and I’m interested in seeing more from Elia Suleiman, Palestine and beyond.