Born in Nazareth in 1950 to a Palestinian working-class family, Michel Khleifi is considered the founder of contemporary Palestinian cinema and one of its most original voices. After immigrating to Belgium in 1970, he studied theatre and television at INSAS, Brussels and worked for RTBF (Belgian television) before making his first feature-length documentary, Fertile Memory (1980), which combined a lyrical aesthetic with a critical political engagement, as did Maloul Celebrates its Destruction (1985).
In 1987, he directed Wedding in Galilee, the first feature film entirely shot in Palestine by a Palestinian director, which premiered at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and won the International Critics Prize among many other awards. The film marked Palestinian cinema’s entry into the international scene.
Wedding in Galilee is a lyrical, passionate tale of a wedding that takes place in an occupied village, and the contemporary tensions, contradictions and hostilities that surround it.
Speaking on the film around the time of its production, Khleifi said, “In Palestine politics are everywhere so I wanted to show how there is life on one hand, and politics on the other and how in Palestine they come together all the time”. (The Guardian, Oct. 31 1986).
Join us as we revisit this classic in a recent restoration and reflect on its significance in the canon of Palestinian cinema.