The Report on Muayad and Rami

Palestinian director/producer brothers Muayad and Rami Alayan return to CineMart a year after their The Reports on Sarah and Saleem took IFFR, and subsequently the international festival scene, by storm. Their new project, A House in Jerusalem, budgeted at €980k and written by the filmmaking pair, tells of a Jewish-American girl who, after the sudden death of her mother and subsequent relocation to Jerusalem, befriends the ghost of a Palestinian girl.

"This film is very personal," Muayad told IFFR Pro Daily. "It is really inspired by the experience of growing up around my father and my grandmother and my mother who were all refugees of the war, and who all lost homes and loved ones back in the 1940s. We grew up driving through Jerusalem with my father in the neighbourhood where he grew up as a child, and he used to narrate to us so many stories about the lives of people and his life in that area before the war, and before it became what it is today."

"And he really painted this magical realist story of the neighbourhood," Muayad continues. "For us as children, it would seem like this average street where you have a McDonald's and a Starbucks, but for him, it was that old [place] that he grew up in, where he knew everybody and he was delivering meat from my grandfather's butcher's store on his bicycle, where he would drive that parrot crazy on that balcony, knowing the secret lives of everybody."

"In a way, the theme we are exploring with the film is the split souls of people who deal with loss and grief, and how people figure out a way to move on in life, even though a certain part of their soul is broken and hanging somewhere else in another place in another time."

At CineMart 2019 the brothers are looking for co-production partners on the 90% English language project which, they say, will require special effects and which will be shot internationally, in part. "There is more to explore than in [any] co-production we are used to or have experienced in the past," stressed Muayad.

The Reports on Sarah and Saleem, the duo's second film, won the Hubert Bals Fund Audience Award and was awarded IFFR's Special Jury Award after its selection for 2018 Tiger Competition. The film had previously received HBF and Boost NL support. It was quickly picked up for international sales by Heretic Outreach who brokered deals with (among others) France, Italy, Germany, Benelux, Argentina, the US, Australia, Greece, and Portugal.

The film's US premiere was at Seattle where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature Film. At the Durban Film Festival, it picked up the gongs for best film and best actress. "We come from a region where there are tremendous obstacles, financial, political, geopolitical, technical, you name it. So we feel very lucky to have been supported by IFFR and HBF and the other parts of this amazing establishment."

All of which boosts Muayad's resolve ahead of CineMart 2019. "Yes, the previous film had an amazing success after IFFR so there is certain confidence from everyone who is talking with us that they know that we are a company and a team that will deliver content that is appealing to a worldwide audience."