This feature film, released in early December on Netflix, has as its backdrop the Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic), which in the eyes of the Palestinians represents their mass exodus during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

It tells the story of a Palestinian teenager whom her father hides in the pantry of their house during the attack by Jewish fighters on their village, from where she will helplessly witness a massacre of civilians.

The film is inspired by a true story, that of a woman named Radiyé, explains the 35-year-old director, whose first feature film this is.

"Hinge stage"

"Radiyé had been locked up by her father who feared for her life, and when she was finally able to come out of hiding, she went to Syria. That's where she told the story to my mother," adds the director, whose mother is Syrian and whose father is from Ramlé, a town from which most of the Palestinian inhabitants had to flee in 1948.

"My mother in turn passed on this story to me and I decided to make a film out of it to share it," she says.

She specifies that she "lost all contact since the uprising in Syria (in 2011) with this woman" who lived in the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk, near Damascus, devastated by fighting during the war.

"I wanted to open the eyes of the world to this pivotal stage in the history of the Arab world and the whole world, to show that this land had a people, with people who had dreams and ambitions", underlines Darin Sallam.

The film was shot in Jordan, which has a large Palestinian community, particularly in the localities of Ajloun and Fuheis, where the houses resemble those of the Palestinian village where the story of 14-year-old Farha begins.

The teenager dreams of continuing her studies and tries to convince her father, talks marriage with her friends, takes part in picking figs... before the attack on the village.

"I wanted to make a human film, the story of a girl who had to give up her dreams because of events over which she had no control", explains the director.

Jordanian Darin J. Sallam, who directed the film "Farha", points in a history book to the village of Lifta during the time of Mandatory Palestine, during an interview with AFP on January 10, 2023 in Amman © Khalil MAZRAAWI / AFP

She says she wanted to avoid scenes of violence, with the exception of one, when the teenager, hidden for days in the cellar, sees through a crack in the door members of the Hagannah, the core of the army of the Jewish state, slaughtering a family in cold blood.

"This scene, which shocked the Israeli government, is just a drop in the ocean of suffering of millions of Palestinians during the Nakba," says the director.

During a screening in the United States, the film awakened memories among spectators.

"An 80-year-old woman who saw the film (...) told me that she had lived through the Nakba and said: 'Farha, it's me,'" says Ms. Sallam.

"Lies"

In Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, who was finance minister when the film was released on Netflix, condemned the platform for broadcasting the film, whose “sole purpose” he said was “to incite hatred against soldiers. Israelis".

His colleague at Culture Chili Tropper also stepped up, accusing the film of peddling "lies".

But for the director, "denying the Nakba (...) is denying the tragedy of millions of people".

"My own father lived through the Nakba, he was six months old when his parents fled with him to Jordan," adds Darin Sallam.

More than 760,000 Palestinians fled their towns and villages, of which more than 400 were destroyed by Jewish forces during the 1948 war. Their descendants are mainly distributed between Jordan, Syria and Lebanon where many still live in camps refugees.

Jordanian Darin J. Sallam, who directed the film "Farha", during an interview with AFP in Amman on January 10, 2023 © Khalil MAZRAAWI / AFP

Award-winning at several international festivals, "Farha" is not the first film to spark controversy for tackling the subject of alleged Israeli massacres in 1948.

Israeli director Alon Schwarz faced harsh criticism in 2022 after a documentary about an alleged massacre of Palestinians in a village.

© 2023 AFP