It Must Be Heaven

A filmmaker leaves his house in Nazareth and travels to Paris and then New York to raise money for his new film. He does not speak anywhere; he only watches. In Paris everyone in the street is measuring everyone else; in New York everyone in the supermarket has a weapon on their back. Producers find his film not Palestinian enough. The subject is not exile but finding home everywhere. The filmmaker looks with the same expression wherever he sees another form of what he fled, and all of the comedy is built on that repetition. The form is arranged as sketches: fixed camera, symmetrical framing, almost no dialogue. Each section is a single observation and does not resolve. Elia Suleiman plays himself in his own films and never speaks, a choice he has kept throughout his career. The film competed at Cannes in 2019 and took a special mention and the FIPRESCI prize; it was submitted as Palestine's Oscar entry that year. Gael García Bernal appears briefly as himself. Who it is for: viewers who like silent comedy, the Tati tradition and political observation. Who it is not for: anyone wanting narrative; the film tells no story and makes no connections between its sections.