Saturday, April 7

Muayad Alayan: “We worked looking over our shoulder”

The screening of The Reports on Sarah and Saleem from the section “Bests of the Fests” took place with the participation of the film’s director, Muayad Alayan, and the actor Adeeb Safadi. The film follows the relationship of an Israeli woman with a Palestinian man in Jerusalem. The director Alayan said:

“Such things and relationships similar to the ones you saw can happen in Jerusalem. We hear marriages between Palestinians and Israelis; we know of them. But they are not open in the public; they are left in the shadows of the city, in the underground.”

Alayan said that they had faced many difficulties during the shootings in Jerusalem: “We did the shooting with the fear that we would be arrested anytime. We thought they would be chasing us like a cat would chase a mouse, so we were running from one place to the other all the time. We had to work looking over our shoulder but we did it finally.”

And one of the leading actors in the film, Adeeb Safadi said: “You may call us masochists but I liked it that there was so much tension. I mean I didn’t want to just to start and shoot the film comfortably and go to bed, so to speak. A problem would appear and we would solve it. We progressed by solving problems. It’s the kind of work I enjoy.”

Photo: Ersin Durmuş