Miral

2010/ France, Israel, Italy and India/ 112mins/ Dir. Julian Schnabel
Cast: Hiam Abbass, Freida Pinto, Omar Metwally, Vanessa Redgrave

Based on Rula Jebreal’s first-hand account of growing up in East Jerusalem, Miral is the richly textured and deeply moving account of an intelligent young woman whose personal story is inextricably linked with the political history and social consequences of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

From Julian Schnabel, director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, comes Miral, the visceral, first-person diary of a young girl growing up in East Jerusalem as she confronts the effects of occupation and war in every corner of her life.

Spanning the period from the birth of the State of Israel in 1948 to the brief hope of the Oslo peace agreement in 1994, Miral begins with the setting up of an orphanage and school for Palestinian children. The owner of the school, Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass), is an inspirational figure who believes education is the only route to peace. Miral (Freida Pinto) joins the school in 1978, but eleven years later as the first Intifada gathers support, she begins to question Hind’s fundamentally non-violent belief.

Like his paintings made out of shards, Schnabel pieces together momentary fragments of Miral’s world – how she was formed, who influenced her, all that she experiences in her tumultuous early years – to create a raw, moving, poetic portrait of a woman whose small, personal story is inextricably woven into the bigger history unfolding all around her.

‘A courageous and groundbreaking film’ The Independent