The Chicago Palestine Film Festival “is dedicated to exhibiting film and video work that is open, critical, and reflective of the culture, experience, and vision of the artists,” writes Barbara Scharres, director of programming for the Gene Siskel Film Center, in her introduction to the festival’s 14th edition. No other national film festival requires such a clarification, but that’s the world we’re living in. Fortunately, you don’t need a state to be a nation; all you need is people. Following are reviews of selected features from this year’s festival, which also includes numerous discussions with filmmakers; for more details see siskelfilmcenter.org. —J.R. Jones
Villa Touma An Arab teenager who’s grown up in an orphanage comes to live with her three unmarried aunts in Ramallah, and as they groom her for marriage their own romantic frustrations combine with their gender-rigid Christianity to create a toxic brew. Suha Arraf, best known as screenwriter of The Lemon Tree (2008) and The Syrian Bride (2004), graduates to writer-director with this excellent Israeli drama (2014). The film’s assured narrative development is buttressed by a control of tone that’s impressive for a neophyte: this is one of those movies whose measured speech and decorous staging can’t conceal the white-hot fury that drives it. An Israeli citizen, Arraf caused an uproar when she entered Villa Touma in the Venice film festival as a Palestinian film and the Israeli government demanded that she return the grant that funded it. “Nobody can tell me who I am,” Arraf replied to one reporter, expressing a sentiment consistent with the movie itself. In Arabic with subtitles. —J.R. Jones 85 min. Fri 4/24, 8:15 PM, and Sat 4/25, 8:30 PM.
Fri 4/17-Thu 4/30 Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State 312-846-2800 $11
