More than three years ago, the Hubert Bals Fund honoured an application for script development from Tawfik Abu Wael, whose short film Diary of a Male Whore had been screened by the festival. Thirst was a rare case of a ‘treatment’ that could be published as a short story without further ado. The resulting feature début, which has already won a Fipresci Prize at Cannes, displays the same mature precision. The director whose film is situated in the area around his birthplace Um El-Fahem (a Palestinian town on Israeli territory), only wants to call it ‘political’ in the same way as every story about human relationships is political. Abu Shukri has lived for about ten years in a barren and deserted valley, with his wife, son and two daughters. The women have not been out of the valley in all that time. Far from their home village, they earn a meagre living producing charcoal illegally. When the father decides that he wants to take water from a mains pipe, the women think it’s a dangerous idea. His son also wants to object, but is not able to stand up to his stubborn and tyrannical father. With the advent of running water, their lives become easier, but this also leads to a reawakening of old ideals of freedom and an urge to change. Abu Wael: ‘”Thirst” is not only the title, but also refers to the mood of the film. I am talking about the thirst for water, for food, for freedom, for sex, for eroticism, love, desire… Thirst for life’. (GT)
