Sand Storm

In a Bedouin village in northern Israel, Jalila's husband marries a second woman. The wedding is held in front of her; she runs the preparations herself because custom demands it. Her daughter Layla is at university and secretly seeing a man from the city. Her mother finds out. Jalila, who has no say at all in her own life, tries to stop her daughter from following the same path, and in doing so puts on her the same pressure she carries herself. Elite Zexer wrote and directed; it is her first feature. Ruba Blal, Lamis Ammar, Hitham Omari and Khadija Al Akel are in the cast. It is an Israeli production in Arabic. The film won the grand jury prize of the world cinema dramatic competition at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. It won six Ophir awards in Israel including best film. Israel submitted it for the foreign language Oscar, the first entirely Arabic Israeli entry. The director developed the idea from the lives of Bedouin women she had met. The matter it treats is tradition passing from woman to woman; the one applying the pressure and the one under it are the same woman. The film does not push its male characters aside but puts the mother and the daughter at the centre. The narrative shows the desert and village life with a documentary plainness. The ending gives no reconciliation. Its limit is tone; the narrative is heavy, hope scarce, and the ending bitter. Who it is for: viewers who like Middle Eastern drama and stories centred on women. Who it is not for: it is heavy, hopeless, and the ending bitter.