Director Darin J. Sallam grew up hearing stories of the Nakba (“catastrophe,” in Arabic) that violently displaced the Palestinian people during the establishment of Israel in 1948. The one that haunted her for years was about a young girl named Radieh, who only survived the destruction of her village by being locked in a room for days by her father, before fleeing to Syria alone.
Stories like Radieh’s do not often make it into the film world, where the Nakba is often not discussed. They are denied funding. They are suppressed. And when they do gain a platform, as Sallam’s debut feature Farha did on Netflix in 2022, they are attacked, denounced, review bombed, and boycotted. But perhaps the fact that Farha is such a well-crafted and harrowing film is exactly what sparked such a sharp backlash against it. Ultimately, Farha demands attention, capturing the devastation inflicted on Palestinians during the Nakba with a raw, rooted, and personal story.
In Sallam’s film, Radieh becomes 14-year-old Farha (Karam Taher), a spirited girl growing up in a Palestinian village. When she’s not buried in a book, Farha does normal teenage things: eavesdrops on the adults around her, talks back to her dad (Ashraf Barhom), chats with her best friend Farida (Tala Gammoh) while they swing together. And above all, she’s determined to go to school instead of getting married. Despite her father’s reluctance, she dreams of having her own schoolbag and notebooks, and studying math, English, and geography while living with her uncle in the city.
When Farha’s father ultimately agrees to enroll her, she’s beyond overjoyed—though a bit dejected about having to leave him behind. But then Zionist soldiers arrive. More accurately: they invade, shoot, and bomb, sparking widespread panic and a mass evacuation. Amidst the chaos, Farha desperately and stubbornly sticks by her father’s side, even as he stays behind to fight the invaders. To keep her safe, he locks her in a food storage cellar. Through the slats in the heavy door, and a hole in the wall, she becomes a witness to the horrors unfolding around her.
The Nakba, the catastrophic event that destroyed Farha’s life, had a devastating effect on Palestinian lives. In 1948, decades of occupation and suppression in Palestine, combined with extensive and deliberate planning by Zionist leaders, cumulated in a concentrated effort to displace the Palestinian people from their lands. This process was violent and traumatic, resulting in massacres (most famously at Deir Yassan), the destruction of hundreds of villages, displacement of over 750,000 and deaths of, by some estimates, 15,000 Palestinians. The consequences of the Nakba were severe and long lasting: Today, Israel illegally occupies Palestine, bars Palestinian’s right to return to their lands (per the UN), and is still committing what Human Rights Watch identifies as apartheid, persecution, and crimes against humanity in the region.
Farha captures the impact of this traumatic event by zooming in on a single viewpoint: The camera never leaves the protagonist’s side throughout the film’s runtime. Given that she’s stuck in the same room for over 50 minutes, this choice had the potential to be, if handled wrong, draggy or repetitive. The film, however, uses the limited perspective to its maximum potential, forcing the audience to act as witnesses to the Nakba alongside Farha. Viewers see soldiers, panicked civilians, even executions framed through the slats in the door, and a hole in the wall, like she has to. This eavesdropping effect is crucial to grounding the film’s most climactic (and violent) scenes. Sallam has said that those moments were shot without the actors outside knowing where Farha was watching from— and it shows. Through these techniques, the film effectively creates the raw effect of living through the Nakba in Farha’s shoes.
The film’s nonvisual elements are also carefully crafted to immerse viewers directly in Farha’s POV. Rana Eid’s excellent audio design ensures that sounds of shooting, screaming, shouting, and silence communicates volumes when the visuals do not. Even simply watching Farha survive in a dim and suffocating setting generates an intense sense of claustrophobia and vulnerability. The indiscriminate violence committed against Palestinians right outside only compounds this discomfort only emphasizes that Farha is being trapped behind—not protected by—the bolted door.
With all that being said, though, Farha is not a purely plot driven movie. The film is anchored by strong, grounded performances across its cast, who manages to capture complex family dynamics and fleshed out individuals despite very limited screentime. To be clear, this effort doesn’t simply “humanize” Palestinians (a minimizing and overused term!). What it does show, however, is that Palestinians were never passive victims—but people fighting to survive and preserve their lives and ambitions, despite the active attempts to eliminate them.
An exemplar of this is Farha herself, whose curious, stubborn, strong-willed, crafty nature is perfectly captured by Taher. Farha’s eagerness to fight for her dreams, which was central to her personality before the Nakba, is reflected in her agency when the crisis happens. We see her choose to become a witness throughout the film: she chooses to stay behind, chooses to look outside, and chooses to persevere, in ways consistent with how her character is set up from the beginning. At the same time, her arc captures the traumatic impact of the Nakba on her. Sallam’s film has often been described as Farha’s coming of age story—and it’s devastating to see how her dreams and personality have been irrevocably changed by what she’s lived through.
Unfortunately, discussing Farha requires mentioning the “controversy” surrounding its Netflix release. But it’s not fair to describe the coordinated attack on the film as “controversy,” in same way it’s not fair to describe what’s happening in Palestine as a “conflict.” Review bombing and Tweeting might just seem like funny things perpetually online angry fans do—but in this case, it really can’t be understated how high the stakes are.
Repressing the memory of the Nakba is a critical tool of ongoing apartheid against Palestinians—especially in Israel, where said suppression is codified into law. The 2011 “Nakba law,” for instance, essentially removes funding for anything that discusses the Nakba. This legislation has already been weaponized against Palestinian films: It’s directly resulted in the cancellation of multiple film festivals about the Nakba, and has made finding funding and support for other films more difficult. And even before the Nakba Law was passed, existing Palestinian films have faced difficulties at every step of the filmmaking process, from filming in occupied territories to securing distribution rights. This information shows that many of the threats against Farha, such as Israeli finance minister Avigdor Lieberman’s vow to defund theaters showing it, are not empty.
And it can’t be understated how important preserving these memories of the Nakba is—especially considering that the consequences of the event are still severe today. Source after source after source after source details the abuses that Palestinians face today at the hand of Israeli settlers, including severe water shortages, destruction of homes, movement restrictions, and the denial of the Palestinian diaspora’s legal right to return home. The erasure of the Nakba in film and the arts only justifies these present atrocities.
Films like Farha are especially important to combatting this erasure. (As Sallam succinctly put it: “[F]ilms live and we die.”) After all, in many ways, Farha herself stands for collective memory of Palestinians affected by the Nakba: In the wake of the film’s release, audience members, activists, survivors, and even the film’s crew have recounted how they have seen themselves, their parents, their grandparents, or other family in Farha’s experience. Ultimately, Farha is as raw as it is important, preserving the memory of a devastating historical event on a moving personal level.
Farha is currently available to stream on Netflix.
Farha is as raw as it is important, preserving the memory of a devastating historical event on a moving personal level.
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GVN Rating 9
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User Ratings (2 Votes)
5.6