This conversation is not playing out before me; but rather, on screen during McGill’s Islamic Studies Institute’s screening of England Times Palestine. Directed by Caroline Rooney, a professor at the University of Kent specialized in postcolonial representations of the Middle East, England Times Palestine was produced as a response to the centenary of the British-sponsored Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was the first document to formally recognize the foundation of a “Jewish national home,” ushering an era of forced displacement of an estimated 5.8 million Palestinians now relocated in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza (as of 2017). The movie explores individual Palestinian identities on Palestinian terms through both interviews and personal photos and stories.

Contemporary questions around Palestinian identity are often cast ın relatıon to the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine as both a consolation for the British refusal of Jewish Holocaust victims as immigrants and a desire to withdraw British forces from the occupied Palestinian land. What does it take to be Palestinian, when most refugees have relocated as many as four times throughout their lives? From Palestine, to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the endless rotation of refugees left Palestine drained as Israel swelled. England Times Palestine touches on only a sampling of these refugees located in England, delving into individual stories of fleeing, forming, and fighting.

What does it take to be Palestinian, when most refugees have relocated as many as four times throughout their lives?

Unlike many documentaries about Palestine, England Times Palestine actively seeks to portray Palestinians as individuals. The group of British-Palestinian refugees portrayed in the film find themselves grappling with the identity thrust upon them: British by birth or address, but Palestinian by blood. Unable to be Palestinian and to inhabit their long-lost homes, these refugees have sought out new homes in places like Tatreez. The protagonists are shown creating home in the very country which signed away their beloved olive groves, their Haifa home, and their taata’s (grandmother’s) tameez. These Palestinians harbour and preserve their history in several ways: holding on to the keys to their homes now located in Israeli occupied territory, and family photos of the Nakba’s pain (the forced 1948 exodus of Palestinians from their homes).

England Times Palestine uses personal stories and interviews with Palestinian refugees in England to touch upon their resilient existence. Splicing stories of various refugees, England Times Palestine showcases Palestine’s own entity, culture, and people who, while inextricably connected to the Arab-Israeli conflict, possess their own complexities and personal stories. Documentaries about Palestinians tend to reduce Palestinian lives to the conflict, overlooking the too-often-forgotten subtleties and complexities.

Documentaries about Palestinians tend to reduce Palestinian lives to the mere conflict, overlooking the too often forgotten subtleties and complexities of the locals.

Rooney purposely depicts a myriad of Palestinian refugees in the film. One of them is a Gazan receiving his PhD, after an NGO spent 15 years filing for the passport he needed to attend university in England. An elderly woman and activist for Palestinian rights in London, who feels equally parts British and Palestinian, speaks of her daughter’s identity as a “Londonite” over “Palestinian.” A Palestinian-American, who lives in London with her British husband and children remarks that her children “don’t know a word of Arabic. Charlie [her son] used to but . . .” Rather than prioritizing one identity over the other, Rooney gives space for the idiosyncrasies of the protagonists to make bridges between diverse contemporary Palestinian identities.

England Times Palestine rebukes closed narratives. There is no one path to claiming refugee status as a Palestinian. One of the Palestinian women depicted in the film, a London -based creative writing student, reads a novel subtitled, “A Palestinian Story.” Rooney moves away from this singular “Palestinian story,” or trope, of suffering, trauma, refuge, and the inevitable foreignness that comes with re-location. Instead, she gives space for Palestinians to carve their own history, as authors of their own collective and individual experiences.

England Times Palestine aims to honor individual Palestinian narratives, while revealing the common intergenerational traumas of the Nakba.

England Times Palestine aims to honor individual Palestinian narratives, while revealing the common intergenerational traumas of the Nakba and life as a refugee. These personal histories form a larger canon of Palestinian experience and cultural practices through their juxtaposition. While each refugee manifests Palestinian identity uniquely, the common thread of Palestine, like a thread stuck sorely into the intersecting weave of a keffiyeh, is woven through the rainy streets of London. While the erasure of Palestinian identity looms above London’s Palestinian refugees, so does this embolden them to be more visible. England Times Palestine serves as documentation of the people, the culture, and the place that so many have fought to preserve. The movie is not a pseudo-intellectual shell of “Palestinian-ism.” It is a lasting reminder that Palestine still lives and breathes, wherever its people might be, and they still yearn to be . . .

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Directed by Sophie Boutros, Solitaire touches upon the intricacies of the terse relations between Lebanon and Syria in the ten years following Syria’s official recognition of the sovereignty of Lebanon. Solitaire laments love, loss, misconception, and mending through the eyes of the main character, Therese (Julia Kassar), who is the matriarch of a Lebanese family mourning the death of her brother at the hands of a Syrian bomb twenty years prior. When Therese’s daughter, Ghada (Serena Chami), returns home to her village in Lebanon with her Syrian suitor, Samer (Jaber Jokhadar), the shock of Therese’s lifetime ensues. A political commentary on the classic “meet the family” weekend, Solitaire measurably tackles contemporary Lebanese-Syrian relations that burrow as far back as French colonisation.

Working against the often haphazard groupings of all things Arab, Solitaire tackles regional specificities usually washed over in North American discussions of what it is to be Arab. The director uses humor as a formal technique to discuss Syria’s complex influence on Lebanese politics, beginning with the conclusion of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990 until Syria’s withdrawal during the 2005 Cedar Revolution. The movie even touches upon events of the last decade since Syria’s 2008 recognition of Lebanese sovereignty. The complexities of Lebanese-Syrian relations are indisputable, especially following the recent influx of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and the resulting curfews placed on Syrian refugees in Lebanon prohibiting them from leaving their homes between sunset and sunrise, like in the city Rmeish. Small municipal moves like these have spread throughout Lebanon and widely reflect a Lebanese disdain for their Syrian neighbors.

Despite what Western viewers often perceive as an implicit politicization of these histories, Solitaire works to identify and negotiate these regional tensions. By implementing comedic elements, Solitaire is able to open discussion, overdramatize, and then poke fun at otherwise highly-sensitive political conversations. Rather than shying away from controversial Lebanese-Syrian relations, the film caricatures poignant stereotypes of both Arab groups. Humour thus mediates what is usually a difficult but necessary conversation, but does so carefully with humanity, understanding, and self-reflection. Humour is a thereby an act of humanity — opening topics otherwise too divisive to engage with.

Apparent through the booming laughter of the Cinema du Parc audience, Solitaire’s stereotypes rang true, especially to the Arab audience. Preying on these caricatures of Lebanese-Syrian discrimination revealed an infamous dual edged sword — the tragedy of such rivalries, as well as the relatable absurdity. After only one word of Sabah Fakhri’s tenor voice on the radio, Therese pointedly silences the device. She does so out of disdain for the famed Syrian singer, but this action also reveals Therese’s silencing of the Syrian population at large — a silencing and hatred she repeats throughout the movie. Therese’s fear of the past and the tumultuous political history between the two states serves to inform a diverged future — until Ghada’s engagement. Thus, it is Ghada’s return that serves as a brutal upheaval of Therese’s warped values regarding who is the true Other in Lebanese society.

Similarly, Solitaire plays the role of Ghada to the audience — it reaches beyond the screen to infuse in viewers a sense of awareness. Humour is therefore part reflection and part mitigation throughout the entirety of Solitaire, allowing for two conversations to be initiated: that between Syrians and Lebanese, and audience member and stereotypes. Stereotypes are poignantly laid out for all to see, such as quick jabs made on-screen that highlight tensions between Syrian refugees in Therese’s village. In these Lebanese and Syrian caricatures, room for topics such as familial bonds, women’s spaces, intergenerational traumas, infidelity, and love are also made apparent. Rather than portraying an exotic life set wholly in hate and conflict, these histories rise greater than their outlandish, comedic caricatures.  

Humour negotiates differing Arab identities, and opens a channel through which two independent states with intertwined histories, are able to converse. Solitaire is a Lebanese-Syrian story broadcasted to the world not as another stereotypical one, but rather as a film that underscores the importance of understanding beyond difference. If even the the most caricatural Lebanese family can find peace with the Other — the Syrian — why can’t other Lebanese?

Undoubtedly, the Lebanese-Syrian conflict is more than a marriage proposal, more than a family’s tragedy, more than the chaotic dinner meal around which the film revolves. Rather, it is a complex, living, breathing tapestry of the histories of two people, which have fallen victim to biases as simple as differences in accent. Most importantly, Solitaire is as human as the laughs it generates. Laughter, in its light, human nature, opens a conversation far beyond the setting of the Western gaze.

While most discussions occurring within the McGill bubble revolve around the Arab world as a threat to North American peace and sovereignty, Solitaire challenges these conceptions. Despite depicted homogeneity and eternal turmoil, the Middle East is something more than the local 2am Boustan run, or the debates around Islamophobic Bill 62. Rather than solely viewing the Arab world in relation to shisha lounges and islamist terrorism, Solitaire gives room for viewers to formulate a nuanced take on the regional politics of the Middle East.

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