Programmer's Note

Director Susan Youssef was shooting her doc­umentary Forbidden to Wander in the Gaza Strip when she first conceived of Habibi. As she travelled within the Strip, she observed how Israel’s policy of total control over access in and out of Gaza impeded development and stability, deepened poverty and radical­ized the political conflict. She was also struck by how violence and despair pervaded com­munities and individual psyches alike.

Youssef also met heroically defiant indi­viduals who believed in art as a form of inspiration and resistance. In the Khan Yunis refugee camp gymnasium, she attended a performance of Majnun Layla, a seventh-century epic poem deemed one of Arabic literature’s canonical classics, performed by teenagers. Youssef envisaged a Gaza where the poem’s riveting story of courtship was scrawled across its walls instead of the ubiq­uitous graffiti of anger and negation.

Habibi reimagines Majnun Layla in con­temporary Gaza. Young lovers Qays (Kais Nashef) and Layla (Maisa Abd Elhadi) are university students in the West Bank who hail from Khan Yunis. He is pursuing a degree in Arabic literature and she in architecture, but they’re forced to return home before com­pleting their courses. In the more religiously observant and traditional environment of Khan Yunis, their love story can continue only in wedlock. Yet Qays is too poor to con­vince Layla’s parents that he can adequately provide for their daughter. As the couple struggles to meet up, and schemes to make a life together, Qays woos Layla by scribbling verse from Majnun Layla all over Khan Yunis, a rebellious act that rouses Layla’s father’s anger and exacerbates the drama.

A heartfelt and highly accomplished low-budget indie, Habibi portrays the reality of the occupation of Palestine with acute intel­ligence, and boldly proposes that emancipa­tion begins with the individual.

Rasha Salti