Film Screening:

Salt of This Sea
(Annemarie Jacir, 2008, 109 min, Palestine, in Arabic, English and Hebrew with subtitles, Color, DVD)

-- Q&A to follow w/ director Annemarie Jacir!

The first feature film from Palestine by a female director, Salt of This Sea is the politically and emotionally explosive story of Soraya, a Brooklyn born woman of Palestinian lineage who comes to Israel to search for the land and ancestral home near Jaffa from where her grandparents were ejected 60 years ago. Once she arrives, reality strikes hard and her mission to claim what is hers and fulfill her lifelong dream to "return" to Palestine is obstructed at every turn. Having discovered that her grandfather's bank account was frozen and seized in 1948, she goes to the new Ramallah branch of the bank to claim the funds. Frustrated and deluded when her demands are rebuffed, she and her new Palestinian boyfriend Emad decide to take control of their own destinies by every means possible even if it means breaking the law.

-- Palestine's official submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film

-- Winner of FIPRESCI International Film Critics Prize in 2008

-- Winner of Cinema in Motion award at the 2007 San Sebastian International Film Festival

Part of the Muslim Film Series: Negotiating Cultures and Identities.

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Duke Islamic Studies Center, the Duke University Middle East Studies Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, the Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, and the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI)