Elia Suleiman is a highly celebrated film writer, director, actor, and producer. According to The New YorkerMagazine, “Suleiman’s name is often linked with that of [filmmaking genius] Jacques Tati, and the comparison is just.”

Suleiman is best known for his 2002 film Divine Intervention (2002), a modern tragic comedy on living under occupation in the Palestinian territories, which won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and the International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI); also receiving the Best Foreign Film Prize at the European Awards in Rome.Divine Intervention, as well as his earlier work Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996), which won the Best First Film Prize at the 1996 Venice Film Festival, are part of a trilogy together with The Time That Remains (2009), this year’sOpening Night film.

The Time That Remains, a 2009 Cannes Selection, is a semi-biographical black comedy film written and directed by Suleiman, starring Elia Suleiman, Saleh Bakri, Leila Mouammar, and Bilal Zidani. It offers an account of the creation of the Israeli state from 1948 to the present. The film won the prestigious Black Pearl Award for Best Middle Eastern Narrative Film at the 2009 Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF) in Abu Dhabi. It also won the Jury Grand Prize (with About Elly) at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

According to Variety Magazine: “Suleiman has unquestionably made his masterpiece withThe Time That Remains.”

All three works will all be shown at separate screenings at the MFA during our Blockbuster Opening Weekend, October 21-23, 2011, all followed by discussion with Suleiman, offering a rare opportunity for engagement with an iconic Palestinian filmmaker about a major body of his work.

The Time That Remains Buy Tickets

2009 | DRAMA | 109 Min

Friday, October 21, 2011 6:30 pm

Subtitled Chronicle of a Present Absentee, this humorous, heartbreaking film is set shot largely in homes and places in which Suleiman’s family, who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, once lived. Inspired by his father’s diaries, letters his mother sent to family members who had fled the Israeli occupation, and the director’s own recollections, the film spans from 1948 until the present, recounting the saga of Suleiman’s family in four elegantly stylized episodes. Suleiman himself plays a silent, impassive observer.

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Chonicle of a Disappearance Buy Tickets

1996 | DRAMA | 88 Min.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – Remis Auditorium

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Divine Intervention Buy Tickets

2002 | DRAMA | 92 Min.

Sunday, October 23, 2011 7:00 pm

Q&A with Director follows screening.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – Remis Auditorium

Packed with witty visual gags, comic vignettes, and moments of spectacular fantasy, the award-winning Divine Intervention (subtitled A Chronicle of Love and Pain) is a portrait of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict laced with wicked and subversive humor. Suleiman again plays the central character himself: “E.S.” cares for his ailing father in Jerusalem whilst conducting an affair with a Palestinian woman in Ramallah. Recalling the comic genius of Jacques Tati and deadpan delivery of Buster Keaton, Suleiman’s film is a passionate and surreal depiction of the situation in Palestine.

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