Family freedom

At first glance, Scandar Copti's new film, Happy Holidays, appears to go against our collective expectations of Palestinian cinema. It is not about conflict and killings, Nakba and Intifada, the occupation, enforced displacement, and loss of home and ethnicity and identity issues. Yet it is about strife and oppression of another kind.

- NAMRATA JOSHI

True to his oeuvre, of underscoring the diversity of the Palestinian world, the Palestinian people and their experiences and examining the challenges faced by the Arab community in Israel, Copti focuses on one such family—and their larger social network—in present-day Haifa to bring issues of gender inequality, patriarchy, generational divides, and social and cultural dissension to light.

The family drama, which is a Palestine-Germany-France-Italy-Qatar co-production, speaks in both Arabic and Hebrew. It premiered in Venice in September in the Orizzonti section, where it won the Best Screenplay award. It recently bagged the top award, Etoile d'Or, at the 21st Marrakech International Film Festival along with two of its actresses—Wafaa Aoun and Manar Shehab—sharing the best actress award. The film begins in a hospital, in the aftermath of an unforeseen, though minor, car accident, which becomes vital in taking the viewer into the heart of an Arab family in Haifa.