Directed by Annemarie Jacir. Reviewed by Paul Sorrell

With Wajib (Arabic for “duty”), Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir has created a rich and complex exploration of ideas of belonging — to home, family, faith, culture and land. The film portrays the cultural splintering of the modern world, challenging audiences to consider whether this is an irreversible process and what community means in the 21st century.

Shadi, a cosmopolitan Palestinian youth, has returned from Italy to his home town of Nazareth to help with preparations for his sister’s wedding — specifically, driving around the town in his father’s beat-up car delivering invitations, in line with local custom. This narrative device puts the focus firmly on the relationship between father and son, and also allows us to meet a host of the family’s friends and relations, ranging from elderly spinsters to a young woman bent on seducing her attractive cousin. As the family are Christians and it is nearing Christmas, lavish Nativity scenes take pride of place in numerous front rooms.

With the protagonists confined in the front seat of Abu Shadi’s car for much of the action, the tensions between father and son soon come to the fore. Nazareth disappoints Shadi (played by Saleh Bakri) in many ways. An architect, he is dismayed by the tackiness of the urban landscape, deploring the buildings festooned with satellite dishes and draped with plastic tarpaulins.

On a personal level, he is appalled by his father’s apparent acquiescence in the Israeli occupation; this comes to a head when he discovers that an Israeli whom he suspects of working for the security apparatus is on the guest list. A schoolteacher, Abu Shadi (Mohammad Bakri) is hoping for promotion to headmaster and feels that he must court the favour of the occupiers — or at least not rock the boat. It’s a classic standoff — angry young radical versus the older "realist".

Additional layers of tension are provided by the revelation that Shadi’s girlfriend back in Italy, a Palestinian woman who can never return home, is the daughter of a PLO official. And we learn that Abu Shadi’s ex-wife, also living abroad, is unlikely to make it to the wedding as the result of a family crisis.

Acted with an authenticity that lends it the air of a superior documentary, Wajib is a multi-layered film that deftly reveals the intricacies of family relationships. And while pulling the covers off the elephant in the room — The Occupation — Jacir leaves it to the audience to adopt a political stance. 

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 235 March 2019: 29