As distinctive a filmmaker as you will find in contemporary world cinema, Palestinian writer-actor-director Elia Suleiman brilliantly combines in his narratives of alienation and exile the comedy and pathos of Buster Keaton, the kinetic anarchy of Jacques Tati, and the ruminative power of Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Expanding on his loose trilogy of earlier films that investigated the fate of Palestine (1997’s Chronicle of A Disappearance, 2002’s Divine Intervention, and 2009’s The Time That Remains), his new globetrotting narrative cleverly blurs the lines between fiction and documentary, between Beckettian comedy and brave political investigation.

In It Must Be Heaven, a Palestinian filmmaker named ES (played by Suleiman himself) leaves Palestine to try to find a new homeland. His travels take him to Paris and then to New York. Ever observant, ES finds strange parallels with his original home, discovering odd human behaviours, eccentricities, and incidents not unlike those found there. Along the way, he’s also trying to raise money to make a new film about what is a decidedly offbeat (meta)physical journey.

Episodic and absurdist, Suleiman’s latest incisive, amusing road movie takes on the perils, pratfalls, and possibilities of a now global search for identity. It was awarded a Jury Special Mention at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.

- Tom McSorley

Screening

Saturday, March 13 - Sunday, March 14