FILM REVIEW: '3,0. Nights'In today’s daily tide of reporting of the Jerusalem uprising, Palestinians are routinely dehumanised and the context of resistance lost. In dramatic contrast, Mai Masri’s new film. Nights, recently shown at the London film festival, is an unforgettable human portrait of a group of Palestinian women in Israel’s Ramla prison in the 1. The London audience, many in tears, stood up at the end to applaud Masri and her producer Sabine Sidawi Hamdan. Masri’s documentary films have won many international prizes over the years. Among the best known are Children of Fire (1. Children of Shatilla (1. Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2. Palestinian children’s realities against the background of successive intifadas and dispossession. 3000 Nights MovieThis is her first feature film, but it is fiction rooted in real experiences of Palestinian women she has been talking to for years on trips to Palestine from her home in Beirut. “The 1. Palestinian women prisoners from PFLP [the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], Fatah etc., fought the authorities for every single thing – even a pencil," Masri said."There was leadership, classes, teaching for illiterate women. I wanted Palestinians today – and of course others - to see these lives." It was a time when hunger strikes and tear- gassing in the prison became a public scandal. Renowned lawyers such as Leah Tsemel spoke out about what was happening to their Palestinian clients. It was the time of Sabra and Shatilla – it was a turning point, even for many Israelis who went on demonstrations, even the guards were affected," Tsemel said. And 5,0. 00 prisoners were released, as you see when some of the women in the film leave the prison.” At that time Ramla had both male and female prison wings, and in the female cells Israeli and Palestinian prisoners were sometimes kept together. Masri uses all these elements as she builds the background of violence the prisoners learn to live through. Layal, the central character (played by Maisa Abd Elhadi) is a schoolteacher from Nablus, newly married and planning to leave with her husband for Canada. She is arrested after giving a lift to a young man she doesn't know, and is encouraged by her lawyer in court to say that she picked him up because he threatened her, in the hope of being freed. But she won’t say it, and is jailed for eight years. She is put first in a cell with Israeli female criminals – including drug addicts – where she is bullied. Then when she is put in a cell with Palestinian women she is also initially isolated, and treated with suspicion as a probable informant. Her cell- mates’ backstories are left to the audience's imagination, but their personalities vividly express their political status – the resistance fighter from Lebanon who has lost an arm, the grandmother with two grandsons in the men’s prison, the two inseparable school girls arrested in their classroom.“Leyal stands apart from the others because she’s not part of the resistance, she’s an ordinary school teacher,” Masri said. Stories former prisoners told her of giving birth in prison while shackled to the bed haunted Masri’s imagination, and Leyal’s experience is built out of several true accounts. Her husband urges her to have an abortion, and then chooses a new life in Canada without her. In the prison dining room there are brutal fights between the Israeli drug addicts and the Palestinian political women. Jamileh, a schoolgirl prisoner (played by Rakeen Saad), whose smuggled notes are found by the guards, is tortured and returns to the cell visibly battered. Leyal transcends all this bleakness. She changes in the intimacy of the cell’s communal life, and also by becoming a mother. All the women are changed too by the baby in their lives and he is smothered in loving care. The film has unlikely moments of lyrical happiness for Leyal with her boy Nour – drawing him animals on the cell walls, playing with a wooden bird made for her by Ayman, (played by Karim Saleh), a Palestinian prisoner doctor who has seen her in hospital and fallen in love with her. ![]() FILM REVIEW: '3,000 Nights' FILM REVIEW: '3,000 Nights' #Reviews. The London audience, many in tears, stood up at the end to applaud Masri and her producer Sabine. To have lived the Israeli prison experience with its numerous large and small details, and to watch Mai Masri’s film “3000 nights” means you will, once again. 3000 Nights / ٣٠٠٠ ليلة. 14K likes. Layal is a newlywed Palestinian schoolteacher who is falsely accused and incarcerated in an Israeli prison, where. APRIL 30: Filmmaker Mai Masri, director of 3000 NIGHTS, will be present for audience discussion. MAY 5: Nawal Musleh, producer of DETAINING DREAMS, will be present. Watch: A Mother Must Survive a Harrowing Israeli Prison in Exclusive '3,000 Nights' Trailer. AMMAN — Mai Masri’s “3000 Nights” will be Jordan’s official submission for the Foreign Language Film category in the 89th Academy Awards, the Royal Film. Two Gazans and "3000 Nights" Movie. By Asmaa AbuMezied. Benjamin Haas via Getty Images Two Palestinians, Heba and I, coming from the biggest prison in the world. "3000 Nights is a strong and important film that tells a story we should all hear. Please see this film and see it now!" Ken Loach, Palm d’Or, Cannes Film Festival 2016. Saleh gives a performance of delicate tenderness. He is based in Los Angeles and is Lebanese – the only non- Palestinian actor. All the women in the film – Israelis as well as Palestinians - are played by Palestinians, some who live in Israel, some from the occupied West Bank and others who live as refugees in Jordan or Lebanon. The experience of Israeli jails is part of all their lives – often from childhood glimpses of brothers or fathers in the dehumanising circumstances that mark jail visits under Red Cross auspices still today.“There was a lot of raw emotion and tears, especially when we entered the old Jordanian prison where we shot,” Masri says. That abandoned prison with thick, dilapidated walls and rusty bars gave the actors an important psychological framework, she says. The cast includes well- known professional actors and women who have never acted before. Masri pays tribute to her two casting directors: “They really worked hard, so many visits across the region to find this amazing cast.” Brief scenes of dozens of brown uniformed prisoners in the men’s courtyard are played by dozens of extras, mainly Syrian and Iraqi refugees. '3000 Nights': Film Review. 3:38 PM PDT 9/25/2015 by Sheri Linden FACEBOOK TWITTER EMAIL ME PRINT COMMENTS Courtesy of Nour Prods., Orjouane Prods. Inspired by a true story and shot in a real prison, 3000 Nights. 3000 Nights is first and foremost a human story of a young mother who. Casting them was a poignant process.“These were such brilliant, educated people who had lost everything. Who were we to judge them, giving them one or two days’ work?” Masri asked. She reflected that no doubt many of them had had the very prison experiences they were portraying.“The issue is close to them too … watching them is a reminder that Palestine is not the only tragedy of our region.” 3,0. Nights had its premiere at the Toronto film festival, and was also shown in Bustan, South Korea. It will be released early next year in Europe, the Middle East and the US.
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