Of course, its not easy when people come and ask you how are you?
And then what should you say?
Its really difficult even to speak, but then silence also doesnt help at this stage in our life.
Mohamed Jabaly in ‘Life Is Beautiful’Courtesy of IDFA
Watch on Deadline
In a sense,Life Is Beautifulis a film about a film.
Two months after the 2014 hostilities eased with a ceasefire, Jabaly traveled to Norway on an exchange program.
Life Is Beautifulreturns to those days in 2014 when Jabaly became an unwitting exile, unable to return home.
Director Mohamed Jabaly, at right, with camera.Courtesy of IDFA
You throw in Palestine, it shows stateless, Jabaly explains.
When you wanted to write it in [you couldnt].
I made a decision from the beginning to document everything that was happening to me, he says.
At some point I said maybe I will use these materials…
I saw it as a film.
Life Is Beautifulis what he made of the materials.
In the new documentary, we see Jabaly at work on his previous one,Ambulance.
It wasnt an option for me, Jabaly says.
Then, I decided to apply for an artist visa.
But after an eight month wait, he finally got his visa.
All the while, he hoped to return home.
A compelling indictment of the bureaucratic and political structures that deny that.
A directorial tone that, almost impossibly, manages to find hope and humor amid unimaginable pain.
This is what I always wanted; this is what I always say.
I mean, I say it wherever I go, Jabaly notes.
