The Time that Remains

A personal story of the director's family in Nazereth from 1948 to the present day. The absurdities of Arab life in Israel are the cause of much observation and dry humour.

"A minor masterpiece....humanist cinema at it best " Philip French

"A rare and precious artist: a tragedian and a humorist in equal measure"

Daily Telegraph.

Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i1ANdcDBOY

Common to all the director's films is a detached, long-ranged shooting style that Suleiman readily admits is borrowed from Jacques Tati; Suleiman's own onscreen presence as a stylised version of himslf, a mute, wide-eyed, lugubrious observer, often likened to Buster Keaton; and the writer/director's belief in "humour as a form of resistance".... For most of its length the action follows the chronological history of Suleiman's own family from the 1948 founding of the State of Israel onwards, drawing largely on his own father Faud's diaries... family history often serves more as context than as narrative. Much is left sketchy; it's not always easy to tell exactly who the various characters are or how they fit into the household, and after Faud's death, the family chronology is largely abandonned.

This in way damages the film despite his on screen presence Suleiman has always avoided any hintfo any personal jihad, and here as before he has set out "to make a film in which there was no history lesson to be learned"... But his deadpan ridicule may do more for the Palestinian cause that any amount of indignation, however justified " Philip Kemp Sight and Sound.