‘The Teacher' has painful lessons to offer

Boston Globe

15-04-2025

Yacoub's struggles stem from his recent imprisonment for protesting Israel's policies. Then the boys' home is bulldozed by the occupying army, a routine act there, and soon after Israeli settlers set fire to the Palestinians' olive groves-- an attempt to stop that act of violence ends in murder.
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Imogen Poots in "The Teacher."
Watermelon Pictures
The relationship between Basem and Lisa develops in the shadow of those events even as Basem secretly becomes more active in the resistance. (Palestinians rebels have captured an American who is an Israeli soldier, hoping to use him to get a thousand prisoners released; this was inspired by an actual incident.)
'It's a fictional narrative but it's deeply rooted in the truth,' says Nabulsi, who is from Britain but of Palestinian heritage. She as well as Bakri and Poots each spoke individually by Zoom last week.
'I've spoken with so many people who have experienced first-hand the cruel and absurd things that take place in the movie and I've witnessed some of this myself.'
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When the Palestinian characters forgo revenge for the murder, instead seeking redress in the courts, she says, 'they are turning for justice to their oppressors, the people committing the crime in the first place. The system is beyond rigged.'
The bulldozing of homes and the settlers' aggressiveness can also be seen in this year's
'It came quite naturally to me to marry that reality with the fiction narrative, because people need to love and laugh and exist even in tragedy,' she added. 'That brings you closer to the characters so you understand what's at stake and the potential of the lives they could be leading had there not been this oppression.'
Poots praises the approach while acknowledging that in these polarized times there's no guarantee people will be open to hearing the other side. But she was unconcerned about any political backlash for appearing in a pro-Palestinian film. 'I think empathy should not be selective,' she says. 'You have to follow these things through if you believe in them. We tried making something that speaks to what's happening there. It's necessary, but it can never be fully sufficient.'
The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2023; and Nabulsi says that even though her film is set in the West Bank, not Gaza, distributors grew especially wary of releasing the film after Hamas's attack the next month and Israel's ongoing war in response.
Bakri, who is Palestinian, says it's this fraught environment that makes the film especially crucial. 'We have a truth to tell and we hope we are opening people's eyes to what is happening,' he says.
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Bakri, who grew emotional while discussing the subjugation of his people, didn't require research or preparation. 'I live in the grief of this reality, the humiliations we've had to face, swallowing all these poisonous day-to-day atrocities from the occupier,' he says.
To capture the reality on the ground, Nabulsi filmed in the West Bank. 'When you're making independent cinema, you're always advised to find the path of least resistance,' she says, 'and this was the opposite, with checkpoints, roadblocks and other logistical issues.'
Poots says the film will prove eye-opening to Western audiences.
'My understanding of the Middle East had been limited to everything I'd learned through the Western media and this was an on-the-ground education,' she says. 'If everybody had the chance to go and see this with their own eyes, what a different conversation we'd be having.'
She says long walks in the evening gave her an appreciation for both the beauty of the land and the openness of the people, whether it was the old man she and Bakri played chess with or the kids who offered her their candy.
Farah Nabulsi at the Red Sea International Film Festival last December.
Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images for The Red Sea International Film Festival
'Their kindness was quite astounding, and they don't speak about themselves like they're victims,' Poots says. 'There is also an insane creativity and inventiveness about them, which probably isn't spoken about enough.'
Still, Nabulsi says, the grim reality was ever present. Six teenage boys were killed by Israeli military and settlers in the three months she was there and while they were filming the settlers burned the olive groves in the village that her characters lived in, just like in the film. 'We could see the smoke,' she says, adding that on another day she drove past a couple with their six children in front of their freshly demolished home.
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Those incidents helped inspire her resolve but also took a toll, especially because she needed to stay upbeat and create a 'cocoon' of safety for the cast and crew.
'I underestimated how it impacts you emotionally when you're trying to do justice while the injustice is literally unfolding around you in real time,' she says. Still, she never wavered in the mission. 'I truly believe that's the power of cinema, to bring to life the distant, abstract and misunderstood.'
One film will not, of course, bring peace to the Middle East, Bakri says. 'The world is not going to change right away,' he says. 'We leave a trace and hope that one day people will be ready for change. It's a cumulative process. We work for awareness because that is maybe the most dangerous weapon against any kind of oppression.'