Alayan's 'Conversation with the Sea' Trailer Debuts at TIFF — SkimNews
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- Muayad Alayan's Jerusalem-set drama 'Conversation with the Sea' premieres in North America at TIFF on Wednesday after debuting at Venice, with Deadline unveiling the trailer.
- Kamel El Basha, the 2017 Venice Volpi Cup winner for 'The Insult,' plays a 60-year-old Palestinian man ordered by an Israeli court to pay a social security debt allegedly owed by his son, who drowned in the Red Sea years earlier.
- The protagonist's quest to secure proof of his son's death for Israeli authorities reveals there is no official record of it, sending him on a journey across Jerusalem.
- The film portrays Palestinian life in the city through the protagonist's encounters with Israeli bureaucrats, soldiers, and armed settlers, set against a backdrop of home evictions and fear.
- The Palestinian-Netherlands-Saudi Arabian-Qatari coproduction is lead produced by Palcine Productions (Alayan and Rami Alayan), with co-producers KeyFilm, the Red Sea Fund, and Metafora Production.
- Funding comes from the Netherlands Film Fund, Hubert Bals Film Fund, the Doha Film Institute, and Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, with Mad World handling international sales.
- Alayan's previous features include 'Love, Theft and Other Entanglements,' 'The Reports on Sarah and Saleem,' and 'A House in Jerusalem,' and he has worked with Palestinian youth and community centers on cinema projects.
Why it matters: Alayan's TIFF bow puts a bureaucratic absurdity — a dead son's unrecorded death carrying a live social security debt — at the center of a portrait of Palestinian Jerusalem, backed by a four-country funding coalition led by Palcine Productions, with Mad World driving international sales into the festival-to-market pipeline.
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