Happy Holidays

Rami, a Palestinian from Haifa, is dealing with his Jewish girlfriend’s sudden change of heart about her planned abortion. His mother, Hanan, is facing a financial crisis and becomes entangled in complications while seeking compensation for her daughter’s Fifi accident. Miri is forced to confront her daughter’s depression while also working to undermine her sister’s pregnancy with Rami. Fifi grapples with the guilt of hiding a secret that risks her family’s reputation and her burgeoning relationship with Dr. Walid.

The daily news cycle brings us endless stories of inter-tribal conflict. Sometimes the tribes are nation states, sometimes ethnic or religious groups, sometimes political blocs. What the conflict narrative invariably misses is how those tribes police their own members. That’s the needle-sharp focus of Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti’s new drama, which places an Arab-speaking Israeli family at the hub of a wheel of intersecting stories. They and their Jewish neighbours are ‘good people’, yet we realise with a growing sense of dread that some of them are capable of doing terrible things in the name of what they consider to be right. It’s a globally resonant drama that will appeal to cineastes with a taste for tough, gritty, thought-provoking stories.

Lee Marshall, Screen International