salt of this sea (imdb) is about soraya, a brooklyn-born palestinian woman, who travels to ramallah to withdraw the money her grandfather left her from a palestinian bank. in the first scene she's trying to clear customs in ben gurion international airport. she is pulled aside because of her arab name, questioned, strip searched, questioned again, et cetera. that pretty much sets the tone for the entire film.
soraya makes it to ramallah and tries to claim the money from her grandfather's account. her request is denied because the account dates back to before 1948. "that money is lost", they tell her. soraya won't give up. she appeals her claim to the british head honcho of the bank, but he also turns her down. so soraya and two local friends, emad and marwan, rob the bank, and then escape to israel by stealing israeli license plates and posing and jews to get them access to the settler-only road system. once in israel they travel to the places they have only heard about in stories: tel aviv, jaffa and the ruins of emad's ancestral village. i was amused to see that this t-shirt that i photographed in jerusalem last august had a significant role in the plot.
"salt" is a straightforward palestinian polemic of a film, and makes no apologies about it. to the extent that soraya represents the moral compass of the story (and i think that is what the filmmaker intended) there are parts of the movie that are somewhat problematic. two bit in particular stand out. the bank robbery is seen by soraya as a way to claim what is rightfully hers. while she believed that the bank should honor her claim, the bank has a bit of a point that the account disappeared when the jaffa branch fell under israeli control in 1948. it's not at all clear to me that the bank is the one that took it. by robbing the bank, probably all that soraya was accomplishing was taking money out of ramallah and further impoverishing the community. the film seems to approve of the robbery as justice for soraya's grandfather's disappearing account. but that logic only works if you don't think about it too much.
and then there's the scene at her grandfather's house in jaffa. the trio arrive and announce to the current resident that the house is rightfully soraya's. surprisingly, they are welcomed into the house. the israeli "owner" (i used quotes because the legitimacy of that ownership is one of the things the film draws into question) is a young liberal with "peace now" mugs in her cupboard. emad and marwan seem satisfied when the israeli tells them they are welcome to stay indefinitely, but soraya is upset that her grandfather's furniture is no longer there and offended by the notion that she has to be invited to stay in what is rightfully her own house. it's hard to understand soraya's expectation that the furniture would still be there after 60 years. when soraya directs her anger at the current "owner", insisting that the israeli acknowledge that soraya is the real owner and becoming upset when the resident resists saying those words, the anger seemed to me to be misplaced. if the purpose of the film is to make us empathize with soraya's exploration of the displacement of her people, the scene really backfired. i ended up having more sympathy for the israeli who took soraya and her friends in, let them stay at her house for free, and then got yelled at by soraya for her trouble.
nevertheless, "salt of this sea" is very good at illustrating the daily humiliations and hardships of palestinians both in the occupied territories and in israel proper. one thing i was really curious about is how they managed to film the thing. the scenes in the airport seemed to have really been filmed there--at least the place where soraya was initially questioned looked just like the place that i was pulled aside last august. but i can't imagine that the airport security authorities would agree to cooperate with this film. they certainly weren't thanked in the closing credits. in fact, at the end of the credits the filmmakers thanks "all the palestinians who risked arrest to help make this film." that certainly piqued my curiosity.
