The Time That Remains is Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman’s semi-autobiographical account of his family and the history that surrounded them, beginning with the Nakba in 1948 and moving through successive decades of Palestinian life.

Drawing partly on his father’s diaries, his mother’s letters and Suleiman’s own memories, the film follows a Palestinian family who remained in their homeland after 1948 and subsequently became citizens of Israel. Suleiman tells that history in his unmistakable style: sparse dialogue, carefully composed images, absurd situations and an extraordinarily dry sense of humour.

Rather than presenting Palestinian history as a conventional historical drama, The Time That Remains concentrates on the strange details of ordinary life: family, resistance, surveillance, memory, ageing and the everyday absurdities created by living within a political reality over which the characters have very little control.

The film competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2009 and runs for 109 minutes.

Arabic, Hebrew and English with English subtitles.

To mark the 20th anniversary of her iconic photograph, our team visited the "Olive Lady," Mahfouza Shtayyeh, in the village of Salem near Nablus, meeting her up close and discovering the story behind her enduring presence and strength.

A short documentary centred on the testimony of Zeinab Mohammad Ismail Attieh, who was born in Deir Yassin in 1924 and survived the attack on the village in April 1948.

Irgun and Lehi forces attacked Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948. Around 100 Palestinian villagers were killed, including civilians, women and children.

The film combines Attieh’s recollections with archival footage and images of the village, allowing a Palestinian survivor to describe the events and the families who lived there in her own words.

It is also a useful corrective to histories of Irgun and Lehi that remember them primarily through their armed struggle against the British Mandate.

Their history also includes violence against Palestinian civilians, of which Deir Yassin remains one of the most notorious examples.

Please be aware that the documentary contains descriptions and images of people killed during the attack.

Aftermath is a 1967 UNRWA documentary directed and reported by Palestinian filmmaker Samir Hissen, documenting the humanitarian consequences of the Six-Day War and the displacement of Palestinians into Jordan.

Filmed in black and white on 16mm, it records the emergency camps established for people displaced by the war, including the shortages of tents and other basic facilities faced as refugees arrived. The film places the events within the longer Palestinian refugee crisis, coming less than twenty years after the mass displacement of 1948.

The documentary is also interesting as a historical artefact in its own right. Although directed by Hissen, it was written and produced by Myrtle Winter of UNRWA’s Department of Public Information. The Palestine Film Institute notes that, like many humanitarian films of this period, Palestinians are largely presented through the institutional perspective of the relief agency rather than being allowed to narrate their own experiences.

Seen almost sixty years later, Aftermath provides contemporary footage of what Palestinians call the Naksa, the displacement associated with the 1967 war, rather than a later reconstruction of those events.

Kassem Hawal’s Return to Haifa adapts Ghassan Kanafani’s 1969 novella about Saeed and Safiyya, a Palestinian couple forced from Haifa in 1948 and separated from their infant son during the chaos of displacement.

Nearly twenty years later, after the 1967 war, they are able to return to the city and visit their former home. There they meet Miriam, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who moved into the house after their expulsion and raised their son, now known as Dov, as her own.

The film uses that encounter to explore some of the hardest questions around the Nakba: what happens to identity after forced displacement, what “return” means after a generation has passed, and how parenthood, memory and belonging change when history has remade people’s lives.

It is also an important work in Palestinian film history, often described as the first feature-length Palestinian fiction film. Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon were closely involved in its production, including in the recreation of the 1948 exodus.

My daughter is the General Manager of a restaurant that is about to open. I would like to send a congratulations gift to the restaurant on opening night. The owner/Chef is from Palestine and it is a Palestinian restaurant. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you!!

Hello,

I am writing a fictional book set before and after the Nakba in the village of Ayn Ghazal. I'd like to ask if there are any people here whose family is from Ayn Ghazal or any of the neighbouring villages and if you have any stories, pictures or other information about life in the village before the Nakba, and what happened during and after 1948. I have already read the general sources and would like to speak to someone who maybe has some details not mentioned there. Also, if there are any books or articles that group together testimonies from the Haifa region and what happened during the Nakba I'd love to know the titles of those too. I have read general books and some memoirs but they focus on other areas of Palestine.

Thank you.

Im looking for a place in istanbul where I can get a palestinian thobe! Thankyou

Hi everyone! I hope it’s okay to share this here.

I’m a spanish teacher and writer. I´m coordinating a small international literary project called Atlas of Everyday Brave Women Around the World, a collaborative anthology of short stories about ordinary women and the quiet forms of courage found in everyday life.

Women from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds are already taking part, and I would love to connect with a Palestinian woman who enjoys writing and might feel inspired to contribute a story rooted in a Palestinian context: whether drawn from family memory, history, community, or fiction. The project is collaborative, and each writer retains the rights to her story.

If this resonates with anyone here, I’d be very happy to share more details privately. Thank you for letting me introduce the project to your community🌿

In episode 2 of our series on cultural appropriation, @Salem. Barahmeh goes to Amman, Jordan to talk to Chef Qais Malhas about being a refugee and connecting to his homeland through food. Then he crosses into Palestine, and makes his way to the city of Nablus to trace the origins of knafeh.

If so, when was your last visit? How was it going through chelcpoints or arriving at the airport? What did they ask during the interrogation? What is your ethnicity? Does it matter if you have an american passport or other european passport? If you’re a hijabi, did they treat you badly because of it? Pls tell me about your experiences as I’m hoping to visit soon but dont know what to expect.