#femalecharacters — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #femalecharacters, aggregated by home.social.
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CPFF 2026 Review: Thank You for Banking with Us
Year: 2024
Runtime: 92 minutes
Writer/Director: Laila Abbas
Actors: Yasime Al Massri, Clara Khoury, Kamel El Basha, Adam Khattar, Salwa Nakkara
By Guest Reviewer Alexei Holloway
“Thank You For Banking With Us” (2024) is a funny and moving look at sisterhood and challenging the patriarchy.
Noura (Yasime Al Massri) and Maryam (Clara Khoury) are estranged sisters with less than perfect lives. Noura is a beauty clinician who cares for their ailing father while Maryam is stuck in a loveless marriage with children she no longer feels connected to. When their father dies, the two work together to take their father’s money out of the bank before their absent and judgmental brother who lives in America comes along and takes the money and half the house (per Sharia law).
What follows is a funny pseudo-heist as the sisters bounce off of obstacle after obstacle trying to navigate a deeply patriarchal society and arguing with each other. While looking for help from every man they know, they are constantly shut down, told they are sinners and ungrateful daughters, and have no right to ask for that money. Yet, their brother never bothered to care for their father or check in on his sisters. It was Noura and Maryam who cared for their father, feeding him, cleaning up after him, checking in on him. Why should their brother get both the money and half the house when he did nothing? Why do male relatives, husbands, and lovers have the right to tell these women no when they’ve done nothing to help Noura and Maryam survive?
Clara Khoury and Yasmine Al Massri are a powerful and hilarious duo. When they are not cursing and arguing with the unhelpful men in their lives, they are arguing with each other, pulling up old wounds and half-remembered fights from their past like real siblings. Yet, when they see how the other lives and are betrayed by the men they are supposed to be able to rely on, they realize all they have ever had is each other. That will never stop them from fighting, but it helps bring them closer together and, with a little help from Maryam’s youngest son Ali (Adam Khattar) enables them to finally work together to get the money they deserve and to properly lay their father to rest. By the end, one hopes that their newly rekindled friendship can also prevent Maryam’s sons from turning into the very men who did nothing to help the women retrieve their rightful inheritance.
#ChicagoPalestineFilmFestival #Comedy #ElderCare #FemaleCharacter #FemaleCharacters #FemaleDirectors #FemaleFilmmaker #FilmFestival #FilmReview #Heist #Palestine #ShariaLaw #UnderrepresentedInFilm #WomenInFilm -
Review: Palestine ’36
Year: 2026
Runtime: 1hr 59 min
Director: Annemarie Jacir
Writer: Annemarie Jacir
Actors: Hiam Abbass, Yasmine Al Massri, Karim Daoud Anaya, Robert Aramayo, Jeremy Irons, and Liam Cunningham
By Guest Reviewer Alexei Holloway
It would be hard to find a film more timely than “Palestine ‘36” (2026.) Written and directed by Annemarie Jacir, “Palestine ‘36” is a historical drama that immerses its viewers into the Palestinian perspective of the Palestinian Revolt of 1936.
The film follows the stories of three Palestinian families: Yusuf, Hanan, and Afra; Khouloud and her husband Amir, and Father Boulos, a Christian priest, and his son Kareem.
Yusuf, played by Karim Daoud Anaya, is from the fictional village of al Basma and finds himself torn between village life and city life. When Yusuf’s father is killed and his brother is arrested, Yusuf joins the rebels who live in the countryside. However, the rebel’s actions bring increased British scrutiny and raids to his village and threaten the lives of his family and neighbors.
Khouloud, played by the amazing Yasmine Al Massri, is a journalist writing under the pseudonym of Ahmad Canaanli because people will only read her articles if they believe she is a man. Khouloud is a firm believer in Palestinian autonomy and reports on the British army’s violent repressive measures and the Zionist settlers’ seemingly neverending stealing of Palestinian land. Her husband, Amir, is a landlord who believes he can retain his wealth and power if he works with the British and the Zionist settlers.
Father Boulos, played by Jalal Altawil, and Kareem are members of Yusuf’s village and the fact that they are Christian Palestinians who side with their Muslim neighbors flabbergasts the British.
The film’s greatest strength is its cast. Predictably, Jeremy Irons is the perfect face of British indifference to indigenous people’s rights and humanity and Robert Aramayo’s Orde Wingate is appropriately cruel and fanatic. Dhafer L’Abidine provides Amir, a man we should hate, with just enough charm to turn his character into a walking tragedy. The moment he realizes that he’s betrayed his people for nothing is one of the most haunting moments in a film full of haunting moments.
However, the true stars of the film are the female leads: Hiam Abbass and Yasmine Al Massri. Hiam Abbass’ Hanan is a loving mother with a spine of steel who does whatever she can to protect her family and land, even if that means helping a wounded rebel and hiding arms from the British. She is often left alone, weaponless and at the mercy of British patrols but never cowers or hesitates. She is the ultimate representation of the inner strength of every Palestinian mother, wife, and sister who has survived the worst anyone can imagine and still gets up in the morning to do it all over again.
Yasmine Al Massri’s Khouloud is, perhaps, the star of the film. She is absolutely charming, courageous, and powerful as the voice of the Palestinian people. As a member of the elite, she is often gathering secrets from British diplomat Thomas and insulting Wingate before leaving him to deal with matters of real importance. Although she knows Amir does not agree with her pro-Palestinian stance, she still loves him and never imagines he’d actually work with the Zionist settlers to sellout their own land. She is crushed by his betrayal but not broken and continues to fight for a free Palestine.
“Palestine ‘36″’s vast and complicated story combined with its two hour runtime creates choppy pacing, underdeveloped relationships, obscures the depth and brutality of the Zionist and British alliance, and prevents the full exploration of the many ideas it introduces. At the same time, what it manages to cover is both impressive and heartbreaking. While far from a perfect movie, it is an important film that tells the story of the carving up of Palestine from the Palestinian perspective; a perspective that has been overshadowed and suppressed for the last seventy years. The power of Palestinian voices is what makes this movie a must see.
#FemaleCharacters #FemaleDirectors #FemaleFilmmaker #FilmReview #History #JeremyIrons #LiamCunningham #Palestine #Review #RobertAramayo #WomenInFilm #WorldCinema -
Vinie’s Stunning Murals: 24 Colorful Masterpieces You Need to See
Vinie grew up in Toulouse and loved drawing and painting from a young age. In high school, she started doing street art when she joined the “AH Crew” in 2001. Back then, she mostly worked on graffiti lettering. Over time, she joined art events and worked on themed murals, which inspired her to create colorful characters and detailed scenes. In 2007, Vinie moved to Paris for a job as an Artistic Director. This move helped her focus on her own style of art. She began painting her […]