Habibi Hussein

Film projectionist Hussein Darbi brings more than forty years of experience and connections into getting a carbon-arc projector going again – for some vain and vapid NGO pipe dream. A cautionary tale about cultural colonialism that serves as an allegory for much more than merely cinema.

Habibi Hussein is the story of a cinema regained: the sole movie hall of Jenin, a Palestinian city of almost 50,000 inhabitants that in the last few years was in the news due to an onslaught of attacks by Israel’s armed forces which left it heavily destroyed. The cinema, reopened in 2011, was then already gone, razed five years later for a mall. Its pyrrhic reconstruction was made possible through an NGO set up mostly by film director Marcus Vetter – who himself once glorified the initiative in the documentary Cinema Jenin – Die Geschichte eines Traums (2012).

Habibi Hussein is an extremely partisan behind-the-scenes take on the story whose protagonist, the cinema’s once and future projectionist, Hussein Darbi, brings more than 40 years of experience and connections into getting the carbon-arc projector going again – while team NGO is treating him like an apprentice… A cautionary tale about cultural colonisation.

– Olaf Möller

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