The Teacher
Director: Farah Nabulsi
United Kingdom, Palestine, Qatar, 2023, 118 min
Shooting Format:Digital, Sony Venice 6K, 24fps
Festival Year:2024
Category:Narrative Feature
Genres:Drama, Political, Romance, Thriller, Suspense
WINNER: Audience Award
Cast:Imogen Poots, Saleh Bakri, Muhammad Abed ElRahman
Crew:Writer: Farah Nabulsi. Producers: Farah Nabulsi, Sawsan Asfari, Ossama Bawardi.
Email:farah@farahnabulsi.com
Synopsis
A Palestinian school teacher struggles to reconcile his commitment to political resistance with the chance of a new romantic relationship with a British volunteer worker and his emotional support for one of his students.
About the director
Farah Nabulsi is an Academy Award®-nominated and BAFTA® award-winning Palestinian British filmmaker. In 2016 she started working in the film industry as a writer & producer of short fiction films. This includes “Today They Took My Son,” endorsed by British Director Ken Loach and screened at the United Nations.
The Present, her directorial debut, which she also co-wrote and produced, premiered at Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2020 and won the coveted Audience Award for Best Film. It went on to win over 50 International Film Festival Jury and Audience Awards, a BAFTA® award, and it scored an Oscar® nomination. “The Present” was licensed internationally including to Canal+ and Netflix Worldwide.
The Teacher is Farah’s multi-award winning directorial fiction feature length film debut, which had its World premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. It had its MENA premiere at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, SaudiArabia, and took home the best actor award and the main jury prize. The jury was headed by director Baz Lurhmann. The film stars well known Palestinian actor, Saleh Bakri and well known British actress Imogen Poots.
Nabulsi has been invited to serve as a jury member at numerous festivals and as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Filmmaker's note
Although I was born, raised, and educated in the UK, in London, my blood, my heritage is very much Palestinian, and my first-hand experiences traveling to occupied and colonised Palestine in recent years really opened my eyes to the injustice and discrimination that's taking place there and just how systematic andinstitutionalised it is.
But I wanted to get specific and tell a more personal story about someone living that reality, and explore the real-life conditions, experiences, and human emotions that drive a person to make certain choices and take certain actions; as is the case for our protagonist, Basem and his student Adam, and indeed for Simon, our Jewish American father in the film as well, whose son is missing.
My intention with THE TEACHER is to take audiences on an intense, emotional journey into those lives and experiences, and hope I leave them contemplating the choices and decisions the characters make and the cruel reality in which they are forced to make them.