Drama, Thriller, Fairytale

Love, Theft and Other Entanglements is a drama, a thriller and a fairytale. While most of the extraordinary situations and coincidences faced by the lead character are inspired from direct experiences of mine, of people I know or from other real stories that affected me, I wanted to present them as merely a chain of challenges on the character’s journey towards change. I did not want to focus on the events in of themselves or to present them in a realistic fashion against Palestine’s political and economic backdrop. I wanted to focus on the character’s universal story and not draw any more attention than necessary to the place and time period in which it unfolds.

For that I went with a minimal visual style that eliminates unnecessary details. The film is in black and white. This minimizes the visual noise that detracts from the story and reduces the temptation to examine the setting of the film against the hyper-realistic images of Palestine common in TV reports and documentary films. I wanted the place to be a context that serves the story and not a point of interest in of itself.

The film uses just what’s essential for its sets and largely what’s available on location in the villages and cities where it was shot (Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Duheisheh Refugee Camp, Beit Jala, Battir, Beit Safafa, Beit Sahour, Al-Khadir). It also uses simple compositions with mostly long and medium shots. The objective was to highlight objects that are psychologically significant to the character by having little else in the scenes and to highlight the action that is critical to the story by minimizing the set, composition, framing and camera movement.