The Teacher (2024)

"Adam" (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) and his recently incarcerated brother "Yacoub" (Mahmoud Bakri) are facing the compulsory demolition of their home to facilitate the arrival of new Israeli settlers and an altercation sees the latter lad killed and the former bent of revenge. His teacher "Basem" (Saleh Bakri) and a visiting volunteer "Lisa" (Imogen Poots) try to intervene to stop him doing anything stupid, and insist that they follow legal process. Well it's fairly clear that that isn't going to deliver very much, but as the teacher and the volunteer start to become a little more familiar with each other, we also realise it's equally clear that "Basem" is a little more hands-on with the resistance than his public persona might suggest. Indeed, when he becomes actively embroiled in the search for a kidnapped Israeli soldier of American parentage, his relationship with both the audience and the increasingly frustrated youth becomes rather different. It's really quite a touching story, this one. Not in an overly sentimental way, but in a manner that illustrates clearly how people feel when they are wronged and then failed by a judicial system that is institutionally stacked against them. State sponsored indifference and cruelty coupled with a general sense of lawlessness (on both sides) potently fuels generations of hatred and mistrust and here we see just how it readily perpetuates long-held feelings of anger and loathing. The production looks grimly authentic, and both both Poots and Bakri deliver well but it's really the effort from the young Elrahman that stands out. Initially a decent and calming influence on his more impetuous brother, circumstances force him to become something that he might not have otherwise been. Once on that course, is he beyond any restraining from taking a journey down a very black brick road? The inclusion of the searching US parents - mainly Stanley Townsend as the father, serves to remind us that there are two sides to the story and that brutality isn't just a tool reserved for whomsoever might appear the oppressor here, and as the story concludes it does so as it starts, amidst an environment of uncertainty and fear whilst ruins pile up around those whose only real goal is to live in peace amongst the olive groves their families have harvested for centuries. It's a powerful drama that only goes to prove how much easier it is to destroy than to build.