Keswick Film Club - In Between

Synopsis

"After watching Maysaloun Hamoud's sparkling, taboo-breaking first feature 'In Between', audiences will have to seriously update their ideas about the lifestyle of Palestinian women in Israel" - Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter.

Mark Kermode chose this as his film of the week in the Observer. Two women share a flat in Tel Aviv; "Laila is a force of nature, a chain-smoking, leather-jacketed lawyer who can drink and snort the boys under the table and takes pride in overturning the conventions of her profession and her gender. She lives with Salma, an aspiring DJ who works long hours in kitchens and bars and whose strict Christian parents don’t know she's gay". It won't be a surprise to know that, when the ultraconservative Muslim Nour moves in too, problems arise; but maybe not the ones you would expect...

Mark Kermode goes on to say that the director 'Hamoud identifies herself as part of a new wave of realist Palestinian cinema, looking beyond the conflicts of the West Bank and Gaza, and putting women proudly centre stage. Yet she is not afraid to portray the price of freedom in a patriarchal world… Hamoud, too, has paid a price. After being criticised for taking Israeli state funding, she found herself the subject of death threats and fatwas from fundamentalists, accused of disparaging or corrupting Muslim women, Elsewhere, 'In Between' has been rapturously received, with Hamoud receiving the 'Women in Motion Young Talents' award at this year's Cannes festival.

Isabelle Huppert, who selected her for the award, declared that 'the free spirited and joyful women [Hamoud] portrays… are true heroines of our time'. That's a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly concur". It takes a lot to make Mark Kermode happy, and all the Rotten Tomatoes critics and audiences agreed, so we reckon this is a film not to be missed.