Jacir Feels Like She’s Already Won an Oscar for ‘Palestine 36’: “All the Odds Were Against Us”
The director of Palestine’s official submission for best international feature Oscar talks about resistance, memory and the emotional toll of shooting during crisis — and why she never gave up: “It’s been a long, long process.”
Annemarie Jacir is ready to premiere Palestime‘s official submission for best international feature at this year’s Oscars.
“I was at a family wedding and everybody was coming up to congratulate me,” the Palestinian filmmaker said about her movie, Palestine 36, a project that was a decade of work. “I feel like I won the Oscar already because everybody’s so proud of it. Whatever happens next, I don’t care.”
“Even though they had 9 films to choose from this year, this is the only feature shot in Palestine in the last two years. I think it just says something to the testament of a people and what artists can do.”
It’s a period of history belonging to both Palestinians and the British that attracted both the BBC and British Film Institute [BFI] as financiers on the Palestine-U.K.-France co-production.
“The British colonization was all over the world, people have come to recognize that we can talk about our past. I don’t think people are trying to hide it under the rug,” says Jacir, “it’s also an era that not enough people know about.”
Palestine 36 is her fourth feature, and her fourth to be put forward as Palestine’s official submission for best international feature at the Oscars. “It’s not the reason you make the film, but I’m very honored by it,” says Jacir. “It’s our gift.”
She speaks as the current war, after Hamas’ attacks on an Israeli music festival on Oct. 7 2023, has led to the loss of over 60,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Aside from the barrage of Israeli air strikes, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has warned the region faces a “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis with no agency aid allowed into the Gaza Strip for more than five months.
Filming on this project began in Palestine a week after October 7.
“It felt like all of Palestine was working on this film,” Jacir says, lauding all the crops planted and British military machines built just for Palestine 36.
When production was forced to move to Jordan in the wake of the war, Jacir became that much more determined: “Because of the whole political situation, we had to stop and start four times,” she explains.
“The last part of the film was finally shot in November of 2024 in Palestine. That was a real victory for us, that we managed to do it. We had to scale down. But I really fought for that. The financiers were like, ‘Can you just go shoot in Greece, in Cyprus, in Malta?’ It was very important to film in Palestine. It was very important to be in our homeland.”
