Film Review: PALESTINE 36: A Provocative, Well-made Portrait of a Forming Storm [TIFF 2025]

Palestine 36 Review

Palestine 36 (2025) Film Review from the 50th Annual Toronto International Film Festival, a movie directed and written by Annemarie Jacir, and starring Hiam Abbass, Saleh Bakri, Robert Aramayo, Billy Howle, Liam Cunningham, Yasmine Al-Massri, Dafer L’Abidine, Yumna Marwan, Karim Daoud Anaya, and Jeremy Irons.

Palestine 36 is not just a film about the past; it is an education about an ongoing conflict. Palestine 36 presents those historical events through the lens of writer/director Annemarie Jacir for multiple characters. What these differing viewpoints witness becomes more and more troubling to them as the Arab Revolt plays out, showing the viewer various mindsets from the time period and how they saw and interpreted the unfolding situation.

One of the most memorable viewpoints is that of an idealistic Englishman, Thomas Hopkins (Billy Howle), who most likely saw his government posting to Palestine as no more than a stepping stone in a long political career. What he receives is a front-row seat to perceived wrongs and injustices that he lacks the power and voice to do anything about, though he is not silent. He tries. At one point, he rails, emulating the indignity of countless observers. He sees the situation as clearly as many of the film’s Palestinian protagonists. Maybe more so because he is privy to information, conversations, and blunt talk that the public never hears or is aware of, i.e., Captain Orde Wingate saying (to paraphrase) he wants to be on the right side of history by helping Israel reclaim certain lands.

Thomas’ perspective, though brief, is very important to Palestine 36. Instead of a myopic, internal point of view, the viewer is given an external one from a completely different culture and upbringing—foreign eyes on an existential situation for native inhabitants.

Palestine 36 has two bridge characters, Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya) and Khuloud Atef (Yasmine Al Massri). Yusuf takes the viewer into the eventual Arab revolt. He is a normal, every-guy whose life is on an upward trajectory with a new job when deteriorating events in his country turn him into a rebel. The audience sees these events and witnesses the shift in him and all those like him throughout Palestine. Yusuf does not want what is thrust at him, but he feels he has no choice.

Khuloud Atef guides the audience into the upper society of Palestine, and through her the viewer meets Thomas and is introduced to a thriving newspaper industry. Khuloud is a highly educated believer in peaceful protest who soon realizes that the system underneath her feet has turned against her. Her husband’s betrayal of her, his integrity, and his country is stupefying and illustrates how deep the weed of corruption had sunk before its eventual discovery.

Though the viewer cheers Khuloud’s eventual decision, Yusuf receives far louder and more sympathetic mental applause.

Hopefulness in the Palestinian population that the storm will pass and that things will go back to the way they were, or that a new balance can be struck, is gradually replaced by growing fear in Palestine 36. That fear is replaced by dread. That is replaced by a living nightmare, a transformative horror where some of those that awaken into it become warriors against societal and national changes. Some of those transformed fight with firearms, while others do so with a typewriter, until those typewriters are taken away.

Much like the events in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Palestinian local and national newspapers are eventually shut down, with offices ransacked, jobs taken away, land confiscated, places in government destroyed, and rights taken away. It’s like watching the transformative events that lead to Gilead in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale or the precipitating events in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. It’s surreal in Palestine 36 that the British authorities make such radical changes and think the indigenous people will not do or try to do anything about it. If the changes had been small, the outrages pinpricks, those in power would have been correct—there would have been upset, but it would have passed. The events in Palestine 36 are quite the opposite. They are a maelstrom of provocations, slights, thefts, and killings that grow and grow and grow until a character in the film, a young boy in the third act of the movie, screams in anguish.

The best moments in Palestine 36 are the non-violent ones. One such standout scene is when the Palestinian people await the Peel Commission announcement. It’s a turning point in the film where some non-violent people begin condoning destructive force (“Come on, boys”), where important questions and statements are uttered but never answered, like “Why don’t the British give the refugees part of their land?” These are thought-provoking mini-missives, aimed not only at the film’s characters but also at the audience and historians.

Rating: 8.5/10

Leave your thoughts on this Palestine 36 review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons.

Readers seeking more Toronto International Film Festival news can visit our Toronto International Film Festival Page, our Film Festival Page, and our Film Festival Facebook Page.

Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page.

Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Mobile App, Google News, Feedly, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, Telegram, Mastodon, Flipboard, Bluesky, and Threads.