Qatar- DFI-funded 'The Present' in Oscar spotlight

(MENAFN - Gulf Times)  The 93rd Academy Awards (Oscars), which will take place at Union Station and Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles California on April 26, is set to put a spotlight on ‘The Present,' a Doha Film Institute (DFI)-funded short film by British-Palestinian director Farah Nabulsi. The Present, co-directed by Ossama Bawardi, joins four other Oscars-nominated short films (Live Action): Feeling Through by Doug Roland and Susan Ruzenski, The Letter Room by Elvira Lind and Sofia Sondervan, Two Distant Strangers by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, and White Eye by Tomer Shushan and Shira Hochman. The Academy Award-nod takes Nabulsi to new heights, making her the first female Palestinian director to compete in the awards, in the best short live-action film category. The Present (Palestine, Qatar/2019), also a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta)-nominated film, is about Yusef (actor Saleh Bakri) and his young daughter (actress Mariam Kanj) setting out in the West Bank to buy his wife an anniversary gift a seemingly simple task. In an interview with CNN, Nabulsi said: 'The film was about human dignity, the importance of human dignity, and the basic human right of freedom of movement. It's a fiction film, it's a very simple story but it is based on a very cruel reality that exist on the ground today in Palestine. 'It's in many ways through Yasmine's eyes that we are witnessing what happens to our protagonist, which sadly is the case for so many Palestinian children who have to witness their mothers and their superhero fathers impotent in the face of a military power, she said. A family man from the West Bank, the protagonist faces enormous queues at dawn to get to work every day, exacerbated by severe back pain and surrounded by military checkpoints. On his day off, to celebrate his wedding anniversary with his wife Noor, he takes their daughter Yasmine on a trip to buy a surprise gift. The celebratory plan starts off well, but eventually, Yusef has to grapple between parenting and the humiliating realities of the checkpoints they become entangled with. Along the way, they meet many others enduring similar setbacks and daily indignities. Yusef overcomes the small but brutal realities, withstands the pain in his back and tries to motivate Yasmine to cultivate hope. However, by nightfall, as their patience shatters into fatigue and cold, the gift that was intended as a surprise is under threat of not making it home, and they find themselves in danger. (Source: DFI website) 'There are two checkpoints that feature in The Present, one is the infamous Checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem, that's of real checkpoint I felt very strongly about shooting there. The only fiction in that scene is our protagonist, our actor Saleh Bakri, surrounded by hundreds, thousands of Palestinians to what I could only describe as a battery farm, worse than a battery farm for cattle, Nabulsi said. 'I found that particularly fascinating what it means to engulf an entire population, of course, in such an infrastructure but by zooming in on this particular man and his daughter and looking at them as human beings, as humanising them and understanding such as a simple trip and yet in that bigger infrastructure. 'You know when you are making a film regardless where you are in the world it is already tough, you are chasing the light, you are dealing with budget, you are dealing with time constraints, but then you make a film and what is essentially militarily occupied territory and now you just added a whole new level of stress, the director noted. 'As a British Palestinian, female, Muslim filmmaker, I wanna encourage all creatives to be bold to be unapologetic in their storytelling and have the courage to do that. Farah Nabulsi - The filmmaker: Farah Nabulsi is a Palestinian British Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-nominated filmmaker and human rights advocate. She is the daughter of Palestinians who were fortunate enough to make a home in 1970's Britain unlike the millions who continue to remain stateless in refugee camps. Born, raised and educated in London, Farah began her career as an institutional equity stockbroker. She ended up with a CFA designation at JP Morgan Chase before moving on to build a children-focused business that she ran for 10 years. In 2015, she started working in the film industry. She founded a production company through which she writes, produces and directs fiction films, exploring topics that matter to her and she created a digital resource to deconstruct the Israeli military occupation of Palestine in a way never done before. (Source: farahnabulsi.com)    MENAFN23042021000067011011ID1101971272