Pedigree Palestinian producer May Odeh (‘Aisha Can’t Fly Away,’ ‘A Handy Ghost,’ ‘The Hanging Gardens,’ ‘200 Meters’) has added Jordan’s Lina Khoury, from Arab Media Network’s Abu Lugod Studio, to the list of early backers for ‘Centian’, which is headed by ‘Lemon Tree’ and ‘Syrian Bride’ screenwriter Suha Arraf.
The high-profile project, currently in development, won the €35,000 ($41,650) Tin Postproduction Award at this year’s Gothenburg Film Festival Nordic Film Market. The next time it will be sold is at the ECAM Forum co-production market, which will be held in Madrid on June 10th.
Odeh, who won the Variety MENA Talent Award in 2000, is a producer at Odeh Film in Palestine and Mayana Film in Germany, which he co-founded with Zorana Mushki. The film was produced in collaboration with German producer Lena Zimmerhackel and with support from the Arab Cultural Fund.
Set in “an isolated Palestinian farming village in Israel,” according to the logline, “Chentian” centers on two brothers and two sisters, Nabila and Shams, who are joined in an exchange marriage. After her husband dies in a tractor accident, Nabila, who is trapped in the same household as Shams and her husband Walid, begins to develop a forbidden desire for her brother-in-law. Personal tensions and political pressures collide as Israeli authorities begin to confiscate land.
“‘Chentian’ is a feminist and political film about the relationship between a woman’s body and the land. The body and the earth intersect through strong symbolic layers, as both are sources of creation, and women and land alike are given without limits,” Araf tells Variety before expanding on the film’s core.
“There can be no liberation for Palestine without the liberation of women,” she points out, adding, “In Chentian, the female protagonists are brought up to believe that they are incompetent and have no power or ability to act. But when the opportunity finally arises, they realize that they are powerful and fully capable of doing anything.”
“’Chengtian’ is a story about the potential and lack of confidence of an oppressed woman who is often made to feel about her own abilities until she realizes her true strength.
Emphasizing the rural setting, which is rare in “most Palestinian films set in refugee camps or cities,” Araf said the mood of the picture comes from his own experience growing up until he was 18 in “a beautiful Galilee village (Israeli town of Miryaa) near the Lebanese border.” “You may leave the village, but the village never leaves you.”
To pay for college, she herself worked in tobacco cultivation, a grueling physical labor that “taught me patience and faith that in time you would see the results of what you planted and tended.”
“The relationship with the land is very important for us Palestinians,” Araf asserted. “Most of our land was confiscated and taken away to build roads, military camps, or settlements that[Israelis]called ‘Mitzpeh.’ I still remember when I was about 10 years old, a large part of the village’s land was confiscated. But the village resisted,” she said.
Returning to his starring role, director Araf said that the film is still in the financing stage, so the filming location, cast, and crew have not yet been decided. But she is confident in Odeh’s hands, insisting, “She is Palestinian like me and comes from a small village. She is an extraordinary producer and a fierce fighter for the films she believes in.”
Odeh said that when he first heard from Araf a year and a half ago, he was convinced by the content and the conductor’s vision.
“I first joined Chentian as a Palestinian producer who is deeply committed to producing more films by women directors, especially stories where women are truly at the center rather than on the periphery,” Odeh said. “What struck me right away[with ‘Chentian’]is that the film speaks about a very intimate female experience, without being didactic, while also reflecting larger political realities,” added the producer, who added that he was looking for potential co-producers (Spaniards, sales agents, festival programmers, etc.) on the ECAM forum.
Meanwhile, Araf, whose first feature film hit the screens in 2014 with the award-winning ‘Villa Touma’, is looking forward to his second directorial project.
“I write for other directors because I really love writing. But the type of films I want to direct are different: visually layered with minimal dialogue, based on complex relationships, symbolism, poetry, and the beauty of the images themselves,” she said.
Her next script, titled “Kingdom of Bees,” will also focus on women. Inspired by true village stories involving women in her family, the story focuses on the “golden generation of peasant women” against the backdrop of Lebanon’s war.
