Annemarie Jacir Talks Capturing Life Under Occupation & Making Her TV Debut On Jerusalem-Set Ep Of ‘Ramy’
09.11.2022 - 14:27
/ deadline.com
The third season of Ramy Youssef’s award-winning show Ramy, which dropped on Hulu at the end of September, saw the titular American-Egyptian protagonist head to Jerusalem to cut a business deal with a tough-talking diamond dealing clan in an episode entitled Egyptian Cigarettes.
Naïve to the realities of the 74-year Middle East conflict, he gets a taste of life on both sides of Israel’s controversial separation wall.
In between meetings with his new Israeli partners at a luxury villa, he squeezes in a date with a Palestinian girl in East Jerusalem on the other side of a checkpoint, where his actions will result in a local teenager being detained by the Israeli army.
International productions set in Israel and the West Bank rarely shoot in either territory. Most head to neighboring Jordan, and sometimes Morocco, deterred by the possibility of a flare-up in the conflict, in which both Israelis and Palestinians have resorted to violence.
Youssef and his producers opted, however, to film the episode on location in Jerusalem, with leading Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir in the director’s seat.
Jacir, who is best known internationally for her feature films Salt Of This Sea, When I Saw You and Wajib, said a key factor in her agreeing to come aboard the project was the way Youssef and co-writer Maytha Alhassen chose to show the everyday reality of Palestinians against the backdrop of the conflict.
“The script was really funny, but it was also something I hadn’t seen before,” she explains.
“We’ve never seen a mainstream American show that captures how brutal the Israeli army is, especially to kids; or Palestinians getting denied entry and interrogated, which happens all the time, simply for being Palestinians. And of