Chronicle of a Disappearance
Elia Suleiman is the kind of artist who demonstrates, more than anyone, cinema’s ability to transform a specific territory and geopolitical space (Palestine) into an open-air theater where drama and comedy emerge. In his films, every movements, camera motion, and situations points to a single idea: in a given place, everyday life is both unbearable and real, pushed to the brink of absurdity.
Winner of the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best First Film, 1996 Venice International Film Festival
E.S., embodied by Elia Suleiman who, in a way, plays himself, is an expatriate Palestinian filmmaker returning home. Divided between Nazareth and Jerusalem, the film examines the loss of identity of Israel's Arab population.
Elia Suleiman
Elia Suleiman is a Palestinian film director, screenwriter and actor. He is best known for the 2002 film Divine Intervention, a modern tragicomedy on living under occupation in Palestine, which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This film is the second of Suleiman’s autobiographical Palestine trilogy that also includes Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) and The Time That Remains (2009). Suleiman's cinematic style is often compared to that of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, for its poetic interplay between burlesque and sobriety.
Photo: Maison 4:3
