AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we bring you Part 2 of our conversation about a new film. It’s called The Teacher, a feature film about the challenges of life in the occupied West Bank. It’s directed by the BAFTA-winning, Oscar-nominated Palestinian British filmmaker Farah Nabulsi and stars the acclaimed Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri. They are here in New York for the film’s premiere.

We’re going to go to another clip. We played several in the first part of our discussion. This is Lisa, a British volunteer who works as a counselor at Adam’s school. She and Basem, the teacher, visit Adam after an Israeli settler killed his older brother Yacoub.

LISA: [played by Imogen Poots] So, when something like this happens, you shut down, and you feel like you just want to give up. Adam, I don’t talk about this very much. About 10 years ago, my sister was killed in a car accident. It was a hit-and-run. Do you know what that is? So, they hit her with a car, and they just left her there. Now, no one was brought to justice. They still have no idea who did it. And the whole thing was just — unbearable, and I felt like everything was coming apart. And I was in a really dark place. And I still miss her. That doesn’t go away. But you, you can’t get stuck. And I’m here for you. I really am. OK? And Basem’s here for you, too. OK?

AMY GOODMAN: That’s a clip from The Teacher. Again, we’re joined by the Oscar-nominated British Palestinian director of The Teacher, Farah Nabulsi, who has won a BAFTA, the British equivalent of the Oscars, and Saleh Bakri, who is the star of The Teacher. He is the teacher.

Farah, you wrote this also. And you’re centering the experiences of Palestinian youth. You’ve got Yacoub and Adam, brothers. You’ve got Yusuf, the son of the teacher. Talk about why you chose to center your story in this way.

FARAH NABULSI: I think partly because every time I do visit militarily occupied and colonized Palestine, I see the life that the children of Palestine are living, and how they’re forced to grow up far, far too soon, and how these young — these young, young men, or, I’d say, you know, these teenage boys, are being oppressed, are being humiliated.

I’m a mother. I have three teenage boys of my own. And I always think — I mean, I guess it lends itself, or it somehow influences why I chose to write the story the way I did, because I can, in many ways, empathize. I see my own teenage boys when I see these Palestinian boys, as it were. So, yeah, I think that just emerged from who I am and what I’ve witnessed. And I think that — I think that that, in itself, is a tragedy, to be honest, the lived experience of Palestinian children.

AMY GOODMAN: How has this film been received in Palestine and Israel?

FARAH NABULSI: Actually, have to ask them. Palestinians, it has been beautifully received, so far. And in Israel, I don’t know. I have no idea. It’s not something I focused on. We’ve been screening the film internationally. At this point, I do feel that the Israeli society, you know, if they’re not stopping an ongoing genocide right now, I’m not sure how they’d really feel about the film. So…

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the making of the film before October 2023, but it actually hasn’t come out here until now, and what it was like then to film. I mean, one of the scenes you have is Israeli tanks rolling through the West Bank. How did you film that?

FARAH NABULSI: I mean, to be clear, we did release the film in film festivals in the U.S., and it was beautifully received, actually. So, in the festivals we did play at, we won numerous awards, including audience awards at San Francisco International Film Festival, Washington, D.C., International Film Festival, Brooklyn. So, you know, it has been well received. But here we are with the cinema release, as you say, after, you know, October 7th and at a time of genocide, and so it will be interesting to see how it’s received now.

But yeah, shooting in the West Bank is never easy. You have so much to contend with. So, that scene that you’re referring to, I mean, it takes a village, quite literally. We engaged the villagers of the village in that scene to stop — 

AMY GOODMAN: And where did you film?

FARAH NABULSI: In the Nablus area. And so, we would — you know, you’ve got the military vehicle going up and down a hillside in Palestine. And you have to explain to the Palestinian villagers that this is cinema, and this is not a real vehicle. But you’re also aware of the watchtowers. You’re aware of, you know what it can invoke. And we did use CGI to create the several vehicles, because, of course, there was no way we were going to have several Israeli military Jeeps in our film, physically. So, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Saleh, Basem is such a deep figure, the character that is the teacher. He’s a father. He becomes a surrogate father for the young man Adam. He was a father himself to Yusuf, who was also imprisoned when he was very young. Talk about how you — I mean, it was the writing of Farah, but what you reached into your soul, how you did that to create this character.

SALEH BAKRI: I’m a father myself. I’m a new father. I have a son, 5 years old. And this fear, you become — I become a little — maybe it’s the tiny coward that’s inside you, that you keep, you know, pushing away your fear, that you keep pushing away and resisting. Suddenly, when there is a son, it become more — more difficult to resist it, because it’s become such a situation where I see all the kids that were killed in Gaza that I see every day and I witness every day morning, when I open my — open the news and see. So, witnessing that and seeing suffer my son and all these kids is — yeah, it awakened, awakened the fear inside me, the coward inside me.

But still, I fight it and resist it. And as we said, it was before the genocide, but still, the crimes of the Israeli regime is there and dominant and in our day life. So, now it’s more extreme, but it was there all the time. And it was — for us, it’s a continuous Nakba, since 1948 until today, so it never end, never stopped.

So, regarding the pain, the grief, I understood it more, maybe. I understood what does it mean to lose a son, because I have a son. I know how dear to me is my son and how how my life wouldn’t — I wouldn’t imagine my life without him, so — and this, you know, concern that you would lose such a thing, you know. So, this was — you know, I had it inside me.

And I am Palestinian. I consider myself, in what I do, a resistance. I do resistance. So I’m not so different from the teacher. And in the same time, I have hope. And that’s why this teacher is still insisting to teach and to educate. So, because he have hope in — with his resistance. He resists, but still educate. But also, education is a way of resistance, and he knows that. And he’s — you know, he insists on education as a form of resistance, too. So, yeah, as you said, there are a lot of contradictions, many contradictions, in this teacher, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Can we go from Basem to what inspired you to become an actor? Talk about your own life. In Part 1, I talked about having your dad at the table having Mohammad Bakri — 

SALEH BAKRI: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — who is the writer and actor. You often — you will do movies, films with him.

SALEH BAKRI: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re a family of actors. Talk about where you were born and what inspired you.

SALEH BAKRI: Yeah, I was born to a beautiful, amazing actor. And he was — you know, since I was little kid, I remember watching films. The first film my father took me, I was, like, maybe 4 years old. It was The Neverending Story. It was an American film, like fantasy film, beautiful film for kids. So, it was — you know, it was always with me. This magical world of the artist was there. And I was fascinated by the fact that there are always new people coming to our home, new friends coming to our home, because my father is, you know, meeting all these kind of different, very interesting people, all artists, crazy people. So, it was very interesting in my childhood, this world. So, it’s just like a gravity, kind of something that, you know, just pulled me to this place.

But, you know, in a way, when I was a kid, I wanted to be always a painter and a sculptor, not an actor. But then, in my teen age, I discovered I had audience-phobia. You know, I was paralyzed in front of a lot of many audiences, and I couldn’t even, you know, stand in front of my class and read loudly. So I discovered that in my teenager — when I was a teenager. And when I discovered that, it was very strange, because I didn’t know that, that I have this kind of fear. So, I insisted to resist it and to get over it. And I couldn’t imagine myself continuing life with any kind of fear that can — that has the power to paralyze me. And that’s how I started.

AMY GOODMAN: In this film —

SALEH BAKRI: I went to study acting, and since then, I’m an actor. But I’m still painting and sculpture and things.

AMY GOODMAN: In this film, you meet the father of an Israeli American hostage, one father to another. What was that like for you?

SALEH BAKRI: Yeah, it’s strange, but because in reality, it’s — I wouldn’t imagine — it’s like in the film. He wouldn’t, like — the last thing he would see, he would, you know, think — the last thing he would, you know, anticipate is meeting the father of the soldier that, in a way, he hided in his home. So, it was strange feeling.

But in the same time, the actor, Stanley, is a very good actor, and I enjoyed working with him. And in a way — in a way, he succeeded to touch my heart. And when it is — and this is the power of art. And this is also — we are human. We are all human. Grief is grief. Whoever lose his son, he has a grief. And I identify with this kind of pain. With any kind of pain, I identify.

And I wonder why and how people would accept to do this harmful and painful life — to make others’ life miserable. You know, I just cannot understand and accept the fact they control our life. Who are you? Who are you to control my life? Who are you to humiliate us? Who are you? Who are you to take our land and to kick us away and not letting us get back to our homeland, to return to our homeland and live decently and live in dignity? Who are you to steal from us our basics and our dignity? Who are you? You won’t be — you never — we’ll never let it happen. We’ll never let it happen.

AMY GOODMAN: Farah, you come to the United States to release your film. The beginning of your trip, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes back to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Trump. And as we have this conversation today, hundreds of international students are having their visas revoked, and often the reason given is they participated in pro-Palestinian protests. This idea of freedom of expression, what does it mean to you, and to release this film at this time in the United States?

FARAH NABULSI: It’s hugely — of course, it’s — we all have the right to life and liberty of person, and we should all have the right to speak against genocide, the crime of all crimes. So it’s preposterous that these arrests are taking place. It’s preposterous that America is providing sort of a diplomatic immunity and acting like Israel’s crack-addicted weapons dealer, at a time when there is an ICC, International Criminal Court, warrant on Netanyahu. But what it tells me, though, is that if it wasn’t having an impact, if those protesters and those protests weren’t making a difference, then why would they be arresting? Why would they be arresting these people? So, actually, I’m feeling like we just have to keep going.

And this is a very important, powerful moment to have The Teacher released in the U.S., where I hope audiences will be offered a more human, deeper context, where, sadly, that context is usually missing, and at a time where I hope the wider American population will be able to just step into this faraway land and understand, on a human level, what it means and what that lived Palestinian experience is, at a time when in the West Bank the militarization of violence is at an all-time high, as well as, of course, the genocide in Gaza. So, it means the world to me, actually, at this point in time. It’s a privilege, and I’m grateful that we can be an act of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Palestine by being here in the U.S. and releasing our film.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, we just passed April 4th. In the United States, that’s very well known as Dr. Martin Luther King’s — well, the assassination day of Martin Luther King in 1968, when he was gunned down. We spoke about Jenin for a minute in the first segment. You’re the son of Mohammad Bakri, who did the documentary — an actor and a filmmaker — Jenin, Jenin, for which he almost was jailed. I’d like to ask you about that. But Jenin, I wanted to ask you about Juliano Mer-Khamis, who also was assassinated, the Jenin Freedom Theatre, and your relationship with him. He came here. I met him well over a decade ago, killed April 4th, 2011?

SALEH BAKRI: Yeah. Yes, it was a big loss. Juliano Mer-Khamis was a friend, but also a great, beautiful, amazing artist and actor and director and founder of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin camp, that is now mostly destroyed, and people are displaced. So, what I remember in this theater that I — I’ll never forget that. And this is what — this is what Juliano made. This is the revolution Juliano made in this camp. You know, it’s a refugee camp, one of the hardest situations in the West Bank, very small, dense, poor, faced a lot of — many atrocities, many violence from the side of occupation, but still resisted all the time. And it’s a symbol of resistance. And that’s where the Freedom Theatre play great part in this resistance.

So, I remember he, Juliano, made an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. And I remember there was a scene of this girl on a swing on the stage, a swing, you say. She was swinged by her lover, the other kid, and he was swinging her, swinging her on the stage, and she was flying in the air with her long hair flying. And I was sitting there in the audience, and there was like — the audience were boys, little boys, and little girls. And they were separated, because it was like a school of boys and a school of girls. And they were — the girls were sitting on this side, and the boys were sitting on this side. And I was like — I was sitting there, and I was looking at that, and I was seeing what Juliano was doing.

If this theater were — if Juliano was not killed and this theater’s still alive and there is no occupation, I am sure that in a few years, these kids would be sitting together and not separated from each other, you know? And this is the power of theater, because I believe in this — even the teachers of these schools, separated schools, which is, you know, a stupid idea, to separate children from each other. I believe even the teachers would have an impact, not only the kids. The kids for sure, because they will remember that forever. The girls and the boys would remember that, and that would change them. That would change how they were — you know, the way they wanted to educate them. They would change, and they would change their — it would change them.

So, this is the powerful, you know, resistance Juliano made. And he was killed the 4th of April, 2011, the beginning of the — maybe the beginning of the fall of the Arab Spring, the beginning of turning this Arab Spring into autumn, into a long autumn. So it was a very dark day in our life as Palestinians, as artists. But in the same time, it’s nobody held accountable for his killing. 'Til today, we don't know who killed Juliano Mer-Khamis, you know.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave this here for now. Saleh Bakri is the star of Farah Nabulsi’s film. It’s called The Teacher. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.