SYNOPSIS: Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, arrives in Israel and faces the usual cold humiliation at passport control once they learn her family came from Jaffa before 1948. She has come to reclaim her heritage, both on a spiritual and financial level since her grandfather left a bank account there with the equivalent of $15,572.16. At the bank she is told all Palestinian deposits before the formation of Israel have been wiped clean, plus she is unable to apply for a Palestinian passport since she has no connection to the Occupied Territories. Determined to remain, she meets waiter Emad, a young man whose future should be bright, but despite a full scholarship awaiting him in Canada, he cannot get a visa out. Frustration grows for them both, her naive returnee playing against his jaded resident. Blocked at every turn, Soraya decides to take her grandfather’s money from the bank by force, assisted by Emad and his filmmaker friend Marwan in a scene that should have been comical, or at least tense, but is neither. After priding herself on taking only what is owed to the family, she grabs extra wads of cash “as interest.” The bandits disguise themselves with yarmulkes and pass through roadblocks into Israel, where Soraya and Emad, fugitives both from the robbery and as visa-less Palestinians, visit their ancestral homes
BIOGRAPHY: Annemarie Jacir is a Birzeit University and in refugee camps in Palestine and Lebanon. She works as a freelance editor and cinematographer as well as film curator.