Mediterranean Fever

• Maha Haj
• 108 min
• Palestine, Germany, France, Cyprus, Qatar
• 2022
• Fiction

Chronically depressed author starts a bromance with the newcoming small-time crook in this inspired Palestinian drama-comedy that was awarded for its script at Cannes.

Father of two, Waleed, may have a novel in him, but his depression makes him spend most of his days watching TV or staring at an empty document. It doesn’t get easier when the neighbour Jalal’s pop music booms through the apartment building. The volume conflict turns out to have political dimensions, just when an unexpected friendship starts budding between the two middle-aged men. In her debut film Personal Affairs (GFF 2017), Maha Haj let one of the characters travel to Sweden. Now she has them both stay at the Mediterranean’s eastern shore where the political situation seems to summon some kind of existential fever. Maha Haj describes the film as the consequence of her frustration of the situation for the third of Haifa’s population who are Palestinians. Mediterranean Fever has been appointed as Palestine’s Oscars contribution.

- Jonas Holmberg

• Drama
• Komedi
• Religion
• Identitet
• Litteratur