Wajib

Palestine

Annemarie Jacir

Abu Shadi is a divorced father in his mid sixties living in Nazareth. After his daughter Amal’s wedding in one month he will be living alone. Shadi, his son, arrives from Rome where he lives, to help his father in hand delivering the wedding invitations to each guest as per local Palestinian custom.

Shadi has spent the last several years of his life abroad and there is very little he misses or appreciates about the place he left many years ago due to his teenage “political” activities. Now he studies architecture and lives with his girlfriend, the daughter of a PLO leader in Europe. Shadi is all too aware that his life style has never much been appreciated by his father.

As the pair drive around Nazareth, the twists and turns of their uneasy relationship unfold. Abu Shadi tries to connect with his son, while also feeling resentment that he took his mother’s side after the divorce. Shadi has gladly lost touch with his hometown - a city plagued with growing violence and a lack of resources and land. But he knows he has also lost touch with his family.

Wajib takes place entirely in one day. With each stop, each visitor, and in those moments in the car, the two men begin a new relationship while trying to deal with the old tensions and resentments of their former lives. Abu Shadi defends the political and social reality of those Palestinians who did not become refugees in 1948 and remained in their homeland while Shadi despairs at what he sees as an apathetic community suffering from an identity crisis.

Through dry humor and awkward situations, the two men travel house-to-house dropping off the wedding invitations to various people of all different classes, they discover a people fighting for survival and mostly just trying to make a life for themselves. Everyone tries their best to honor their “wajib” (duty). But more than rediscovering a changed city, the two men rediscover each other.

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Distribution Switzerland:

trigon-film

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