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A Palestinian filmmaker goes globetrotting only to be shadowed by reminders of home in this very meta, Cannes award-winning film.
From Nazareth to Paris to North America, Elia Suleiman’s alter ego ES wanders the globe, wordlessly observing its absurdities wherever he goes. Tanks roll into the streets of a near-empty Paris, cops ride Segways in balletic formation and citizens casually carry AK-47s in American supermarkets. Along the way, his meetings with film producers end unsuccessfully as his comedy feature pitch is rejected as "not Palestinian enough".
Winning a Special Mention at Cannes as well as the FIPRESCI Prize, the delightfully whimsical It Must Be Heaven is director/writer/star Elia Suleiman’s first feature in a decade, following 2009’s The Time That Remains. Often likened to a modern-day Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati, Suleiman employs silent comedy to wryly reflect on questions of home, identity and belonging.
"Mostly, It Must Be Heaven is about how we view the world through the Instagram filter of what defines us. But it’s also, arguably, more objective than that – suggesting that we all now live in a kind of global Palestine, where arbitrary displays of power, threats of violence, and lost people in search of meaning and identity are the new normal." – Screen Daily