'Palestine doesn't need Hollywood'

A Palestinian filmmaker has hit back at international film organisations that do not recognise Palestine as a country, saying that he would rather not be associated with them.

Raed Andoni, whose film Fix Me, had its world premiere at this year's Dubai International Film Festival (Diff), said Palestinian filmmakers do not need such organisations for recognition.

"This just makes me feel that we have the freedom and they are the slaves," he told Emirates Business, when asked what he thought of entities such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – which reportedly did not recognise the brilliant 2002 Palestinian production Divine Intervention in its foreign language category simply because of its origin.

"What is beautiful about Palestinian film is that each one doesn't look like the other. And filmmakers from all over the world represent Palestine. There's a Palestinian filmmaker who has lived all her life in the US, yet her film is Palestinian."

He said the lives of the three million Palestinians in the West Bank were completely different from those of the one-and-a-half million in Gaza, the one million living in what is known as Israel or the seven million Palestinians living abroad.

"If it takes a piece of land to make a festival or the Oscars do not recognise a film because of its origin, I'd rather not ever receive an award from them. We don't need Hollywood."


- Fix Me follows Andoni through 20 therapy sessions with a psychologist. Catch it at 6.45pm tomorrow at Mall of the Emirates.

 

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