Possibles Média | It Must be Heaven - Présentation

SYNOPSIS

ES escapes from Palestine seeking an alternative homeland, only to find that Palestine is trailing behind him. The promise of a new life turns into a comedy of errors: however far he travels, from Paris to New York, something always reminds him of home.

From award-winning director Elia Suleiman, a comic saga exploring identity, nationality and belonging, in which ES asks the fundamental question: where is the place we can truly call home?

Festivals

- Special Mention and FIPRESCI Award, In competition, Festival de Cannes 2019
- Toronto International Film Festival 2019
- Palm Springs International Film Festival 2020

Director's note

If my previous films tried to present Palestine as a microcosm of the world; my new film It Must Be Heaven tries to show the world as if it were a microcosm of Palestine.

It Must Be Heaven shows ordinary everyday situations of people across the world living in a climate of geopolitical global tension. And the violence erupting in one place is similar to the violence erupting in another. Images and sounds containing this violence or tension are being felt in all the world centers and not, as in the past, just somewhere in the far corners of the world. There are checkpoints in each country at airports and in shopping malls. Police sirens and security alarms are no longer intermittent but constant.

Rather than focus on the 'larger' picture constantly bombarded by the mass media, always generalized, masked and falsified, It Must Be Heaven depicts the moment in the margin, the trivial, or that which is usually out of focus. Consequently, it approaches what is intimate, tender and touching. It's the personal and human stories that are based on identification which raise questions and raise hope.

As in my previous films, there is little dialogue; what is spoken is more like monologue to infuse rhythm and musicality. Otherwise the narrative of the film is knitted from a subliminal montage; scenes that are composed from choreographic movements; burlesque drawn from the world of the absurd; images that open up to the poetry of silence, which is at the heart of cinematic language.

Cannes poster