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Los Angeles Times
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
In ‘The Teacher,' a Palestinian educator becomes a beacon of dignity for his students
During a seemingly normal school day, Basem (Saleh Bakri), a dedicated West Bank educator with hypnotizing eyes, encourages his student Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri) to get back on track with his studies and to 'regain control of his life.' But whatever autonomy the young man can re-assert seems futile in the face of the Israeli occupation that hinders any sense of normalcy. Yacoub's aspirations for a future have been replaced by anger, all-consuming and warranted after spending two years in prison. That conflicting, burning sentiment of wishing to move forward despite constantly being reminded that your existence is devalued propels Farah Nabulsi's feature debut 'The Teacher,' even as it occasionally stumbles through its more melodramatic aspects. Nabulsi's Oscar-nominated 2020 short film 'The Present' chronicled a Palestinian father's negotiation through a dehumanizing Israeli checkpoint along with his young daughter. (Bakri also played the protagonist in that bite-size indictment.) Within the first few minutes of 'The Teacher,' Yacoub winds up dead at the hands of an Israeli settler, leaving his younger teenage brother Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) behind. Yacoub's defiance seems to transfer directly into Adam, whose worldview has been upended. 'The Teacher' was shot on location in the West Bank and the arid landscapes and homes captured by cinematographer Gilles Porte feel true to Palestinian life, making for an arresting visual statement. Nabulsi, unfortunately, muddles the story with multiple subplots, some inelegant acting and contrived English-language dialogue. There's Lisa (Imogen Poots), a well meaning NGO worker who becomes romantically involved with Basem, and the Cohens, a Jewish couple whose American-born IDF soldier son has been kidnapped in pursuit of liberating imprisoned Palestinians. Basem is secretly part of this operation. These add-ons make 'The Teacher' unfocused on its way to a larger geopolitical picture. What remains consistent through all the tangents, though, is Bakri's performance as Basem, radiating a sturdy tranquility, not the kind that comes naturally but an inner peace he forces himself to exude in order to save lives, his own and those of young men like Adam. If he surrenders to the fury that undoubtedly courses through him, then his personal suffering (revealed in flashbacks) would be in vain. The core of 'The Teacher' is Basem's relationship with his pupil, a surrogate child he must protect. Halfway through the film, Basem and Adam share a grief-stricken embrace after the boy threatens to hurt his brother's killer. From a wide shot, Nabulsi and editor Mike Pike cut to Adam's desperate hands on Basem's back. The intensity with which the teen hugs his teacher, a father figure, helps a viewer comprehend the depth of the sorrow, imbuing 'The Teacher' with a moving potency. But what can you teach someone when their daily reality is so painful? When they must stand simmering in rage as their home is demolished? What purpose can a teacher serve in the face of these agonizing circumstances? Plenty. That spirit-crushing feeling of powerlessness is what director Nabulsi aims to fend off, admittedly through not always effective narrative means, but with emotional sincerity nonetheless. Basem's concern is not whether these boys learn a single word of English, but his presence — the everyday reliability that he will be there regardless of how little strength they may have left — is resistance incarnate. Among the ruins, the most important school assignment left is to live despite it all.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
When Political Conflict Changes the Meaning of Education
At first glance, the main character of The Teacher, the debut feature film by the Palestinian British writer-director Farah Nabulsi, seems drawn from a familiar inspirational-movie archetype. Basem El-Saleh (played by Saleh Bakri) is an English instructor at an all-boys high school, where a substantial portion of his work involves trying to motivate disaffected students. But The Teacher isn't just another paean to the democratizing power of education, or the role that a single mentor can play in guiding listless teenagers toward conventional success. On top of all this, Nabulsi's film spends considerable time fleshing out why school feels like an afterthought for some of Basem's students: The movie is set in the West Bank, where Israel's military occupation constrains the most mundane elements of Palestinian life—including what kind of future young people can imagine for themselves and their loved ones. When The Teacher begins, the soft-spoken teacher, who lives alone, is wrestling with grief on multiple fronts. Slowly, the film reveals that Basem's teenage son died after suffering an untreated asthma attack in a military prison, where he was serving an eight-year sentence for participating in a protest—one that he'd attended with his father. The agony of his child's death, and the ensuing rift in Basem's marriage, still haunts the educator, and as Basem drives along the winding roads of the West Bank, his loneliness seems to fill the screen. So when one of his students, a bright young boy named Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) loses his older brother after a confrontation with settlers, Basem finds himself naturally shifting into a paternal role. Nabulsi's film repurposes the educator-turned-father-figure trope, using Basem's proximity to his student to highlight the senselessness of both characters' losses. The Teacher, which premiered in September 2023 at the Toronto International Film Festival and is now playing in select U.S. theaters, was inspired in part by the filmmaker's travels to Palestine, where her parents were born, and where, as she described in an interview, she encountered people with firsthand experience of 'cruel and absurd things such as home demolitions, child prisoners in military detention, settler violence and vandalism.' Though the film was shot well before the October 7 attack by Hamas and Israel's ensuing bombardments of Gaza, its themes may nonetheless feel timely to viewers. At a moment when settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is rising, The Teacher, in its best stretches, captures the intimate horrors of life under harrowing circumstances—and the lifesaving power of the relationships that people still manage to forge and nurture. [Read: The cost of lawlessness on the West Bank] Much of the film traces Basem's attempts to stop Adam from trying to avenge his brother's death—which, as Basem sees it, is a futile mission that would likely end with Adam dying. 'After everything you've been through, you still believe there'll be justice?' Adam asks him in an early scene. His tone is incredulous, but the question becomes a sort of guiding principle: Some characters do, in fact, believe that things can be better, despite all evidence otherwise. When the two inadvertently become involved in a plot to secure the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli American soldier, a plotline loosely based on the Gilad Shalit story, Basem's concern for Adam keeps the teenager from surrendering to the allure of violent resistance. Nothing will bring back their family members, and justice may never come through the courts, but The Teacher shows how Basem and Adam help each other work through pain that once seemed insurmountable. At moments, The Teacher takes on more than it can handle, such as a romantic subplot between Basem and a British volunteer worker at his school. Early on, Lisa (Imogen Poots) seems intended to serve as a proxy for American and European audiences; she expresses a simple surprise at the conditions of Basem's teaching environment. As the film progresses, this wide-eyed curiosity shifts to righteous indignation, but these reactions are muddled by her feelings for Basem. In one instance, Lisa is aghast to find a gun in his house, but her anxiety about his involvement with a local resistance group feels no more dramatic than her frustration with Basem's reticence about the dissolution of his family. Her attempts to connect with Adam also feel forced in comparison to his quietly moving rapport with Basem. Aside from Basem and Adam's budding kinship, the most significant relationship in the film is the bond between its Palestinian characters and the land their families have inhabited for generations. Nabulsi depicts the West Bank with romantic vision, lingering on sweeping hillside vistas and peppering vivid memories of the natural world into dialogue. After settlers raze Adam's family property, the teen is no longer able to see a future for himself in their village, especially without his brother. But growing closer to Basem gives him a window into what the West Bank was like long before he was born. Through Basem's accounts of his own family history, Adam deepens his connection to the land his brother died trying to defend—and his resolve to avoid meeting a similar fate. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
When Political Conflict Changes the Meaning of Education
At first glance, the main character of The Teacher, the debut feature film by the Palestinian British writer-director Farah Nabulsi, seems drawn from a familiar inspirational-movie archetype. Basem El-Saleh (played by Saleh Bakri) is an English instructor at an all-boys high school, where a substantial portion of his work involves trying to motivate disaffected students. But The Teacher isn't just another paean to the democratizing power of education, or the role that a single mentor can play in guiding listless teenagers toward conventional success. On top of all this, Nabulsi's film spends considerable time fleshing out why school feels like an afterthought for some of Basem's students: The movie is set in the West Bank, where Israel's military occupation constrains the most mundane elements of Palestinian life—including what kind of future young people can imagine for themselves and their loved ones. When The Teacher begins, the soft-spoken teacher, who lives alone, is wrestling with grief on multiple fronts. Slowly, the film reveals that Basem's teenage son died after suffering an untreated asthma attack in a military prison, where he was serving an eight-year sentence for participating in a protest—one that he'd attended with his father. The agony of his child's death, and the ensuing rift in Basem's marriage, still haunts the educator, and as Basem drives along the winding roads of the West Bank, his loneliness seems to fill the screen. So when one of his students, a bright young boy named Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) loses his older brother after a confrontation with settlers, Basem finds himself naturally shifting into a paternal role. Nabulsi's film repurposes the educator-turned-father-figure trope, using Basem's proximity to his student to highlight the senselessness of both characters' losses. The Teacher, which premiered in September 2023 at the Toronto International Film Festival and is now playing in select U.S. theaters, was inspired in part by the filmmaker's travels to Palestine, where her parents were born, and where, as she described in an interview, she encountered people with firsthand experience of 'cruel and absurd things such as home demolitions, child prisoners in military detention, settler violence and vandalism.' Though the film was shot well before the October 7 attack by Hamas and Israel's ensuing bombardments of Gaza, its themes may nonetheless feel timely to viewers. At a moment when settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is rising, The Teacher, in its best stretches, captures the intimate horrors of life under harrowing circumstances—and the lifesaving power of the relationships that people still manage to forge and nurture. Much of the film traces Basem's attempts to stop Adam from trying to avenge his brother's death—which, as Basem sees it, is a futile mission that would likely end with Adam dying. 'After everything you've been through, you still believe there'll be justice?' Adam asks him in an early scene. His tone is incredulous, but the question becomes a sort of guiding principle: Some characters do, in fact, believe that things can be better, despite all evidence otherwise. When the two inadvertently become involved in a plot to secure the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli American soldier, a plotline loosely based on the Gilad Shalit story, Basem's concern for Adam keeps the teenager from surrendering to the allure of violent resistance. Nothing will bring back their family members, and justice may never come through the courts, but The Teacher shows how Basem and Adam help each other work through pain that once seemed insurmountable. At moments, The Teacher takes on more than it can handle, such as a romantic subplot between Basem and a British volunteer worker at his school. Early on, Lisa (Imogen Poots) seems intended to serve as a proxy for American and European audiences; she expresses a simple surprise at the conditions of Basem's teaching environment. As the film progresses, this wide-eyed curiosity shifts to righteous indignation, but these reactions are muddled by her feelings for Basem. In one instance, Lisa is aghast to find a gun in his house, but her anxiety about his involvement with a local resistance group feels no more dramatic than her frustration with Basem's reticence about the dissolution of his family. Her attempts to connect with Adam also feel forced in comparison to his quietly moving rapport with Basem. Aside from Basem and Adam's budding kinship, the most significant relationship in the film is the bond between its Palestinian characters and the land their families have inhabited for generations. Nabulsi depicts the West Bank with romantic vision, lingering on sweeping hillside vistas and peppering vivid memories of the natural world into dialogue. After settlers raze Adam's family property, the teen is no longer able to see a future for himself in their village, especially without his brother. But growing closer to Basem gives him a window into what the West Bank was like long before he was born. Through Basem's accounts of his own family history, Adam deepens his connection to the land his brother died trying to defend—and his resolve to avoid meeting a similar fate.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Teacher' Review: A Powerful but Imbalanced West Bank Drama
With her feature debut 'The Teacher,' Palestinian British filmmaker Farah Nabulsi attempts to shine a light on the absurd indignities of living under military occupation. Set in the West Bank — where it was also filmed, over a three-month period — the 2023 Toronto Film Festival selection follows a troubled Palestinian schoolteacher wrestling with his political allegiances at a particularly fraught time for a student he takes under his wing. Nabulsi's inter-generational drama is carefully composed, though the movie's other subplots (concerning its handful of American and British characters) tend to be more stilted. Where 'The Teacher' most succeeds is in its deft balance between the internal and external realities of its Arab protagonists, which are constantly forced out of alignment by the violence around them. More from Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Timely Palestinian Drama 'The Teacher' Lands U.S. Distribution Deal Amid Fragile Ceasefire in Gaza (EXCLUSIVE) Why Ireland's Galway Film Fleadh Has Made Palestine Its Country of Focus: 'Solidarity' and the 'Quality of the Work' With winding shots of English teacher Basem (Saleh Bakri) driving to work, Nablusi introduces us to the movie's tense but warm and picturesque atmosphere, the venue for unpredictable changes in the status quo. Two of Basem's teenage students — the older, rowdy Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri) and the younger, booksmart Adam (Muhammad Abed El Rahman) — share his class despite their age difference, owing to Yacoub's stint in Israeli detention. Yacoub is lucky, despite the troubles that have befallen him, in that he not only has Basem looking out for his best interests, but a British humanitarian social worker too, Lisa (Imogen Poots), who checks in on him from time to time. However, no amount of care or good intentions can prevent the sudden demolition of the brothers' home, courtesy of a vague order from the IDF — for which the family is even forced to pay. This is one of several painful humiliations endured by the movie's Palestinian characters (the kind also presented in the Oscar-winning documentary 'No Other Land'), for which they're shown to have little legal recourse. With few options left, Adam begins considering and concocting ways to enact vengeance, but Basem, having been down that rageful path, advises him otherwise. The father-and-son-like tensions between Basem and Adam (presented with matter-of-fact frankness) are a central fixture of the movie's drama, resulting in a pair of deeply alluring performances that always feel on the verge of explosion. The premise requires both actors not just to showcase a fiery vulnerability, but to stew in these feelings for extended periods, which benefits from Nabulsi's straightforward, no-frills presentation. Even the B plots that don't quite work — like Basem's blossoming romance with Lisa — are infected by this inertia, and the emotional burdens placed on Basem and Adam by authoritarian bootheels. When you have no outlet for your rage, all you can do is aim it inward. However, the more we learn about Basem, from his own tragic past — as a father whose son was given a lengthy sentence for protesting — to his secret entanglements with underground resistance movements, the more complicated this notion of effectively channeling emotions becomes. Elsewhere, an American diplomat (Stanley Townsend) and his wife (Andrea Irvine) visit Tel Aviv in the hopes of rescuing their son, an IDF soldier taken hostage by one of the aforementioned groups, who demand the release of a thousand Palestinian detainees in exchange for his freedom. These two stories, of fathers trying to liberate younger generations from the violence they face, work nicely in tandem, even though the Israeli half of the movie's drama verges on being overly explanatory. This prisoner scenario echoes the real story of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit — who was set free in exchange for 1,027 Palestinians — an imbalance of personal and cultural value which Nabulsi attempts to investigate. Unfortunately, the question of how much worth is placed on an Israeli life versus a Palestinian one is answered mostly in words, and thus, in too direct (and perhaps too didactic) a fashion, when so much of the movie's drama could have grounded it emotionally. After all, 'The Teacher' depicts the horrors and indignities people are forced to accept just go on living, but the aforementioned calculus isn't allowed to play out with the same visceral realizations as other instances — like the unavoidable, bureaucratic destruction of Adam's home. Much of what's depicted in 'The Teacher,' from homes being bulldozed to destructive attacks from settlers, also unfolded around the production, according to Nabulsi. The film, therefore, comes imbued with a charged sense of verisimilitude, thanks in no small part to its performers' keen ability to not sit with mounting pressures, but to silently convey the ensuing possibilities, and even impossibilities, often without words. What the characters can or cannot do in response, and the catharsis they're prevented from attaining, are both key parts of their story, and of life in the West Bank at large — a reality Nabulsi conveys in stark, realistic hues, despite her first-feature growing pains. 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New York Times
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The Teacher' Review: Harsh Lessons in the West Bank
The protagonist of 'The Teacher' is at the nexus of several dramas at once. Basem (Saleh Bakri), a Palestinian who teaches English at a school in the West Bank, is focused on helping a student, Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri), who has just returned from serving a two-year sentence related to a protest. Yacoub's brother, Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), is another of Basem's pupils — the brains to Yacoub's muscle, as Yacoub sees it. Early in the film, Israeli authorities demolish the siblings' house. Soon after, a violent encounter with settlers leads Basem to encourage the family to seek justice in an Israeli court. Initially, Basem appears to favor a strategy of nonviolent, high-minded resistance, but he has a complicated history. Details about how his past activism affected his marriage and his son are teased out gradually, as he grows closer with Lisa (Imogen Poots), a British volunteer who works as a counselor at his school. Against this backdrop, Israeli investigators are searching for an Israeli American soldier who is being held hostage in the West Bank, and whose captors hope to trade him for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. This feature debut from the Palestinian British writer-director Farah Nabulsi had its premiere before the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza. In some ways, the movie suffers from an understandable impulse to streamline. Nabulsi uses Basem as a single fulcrum that she can pivot around as she highlights elements of an intractably complex geopolitical conflict. But a teacher-student bonding narrative, a legal procedural, a family tragedy, a romance and a kidnapping thriller are a lot to hang on one character. And while the threads all compel individually, the climax, in which Basem declares his determination to redress a past failure, is decidedly trite.
