About the Film

Written in 1978, Fertile Memory was the first film to be made by a Palestinian director inside Israel's pre-1967 borders. Neither a documentary nor a feature film, Fertile Memory recounts the lives of two very different Palestinian women: Farah Hatoum, a widow living with her children and grandchildren, and Sahar Khalifeh, a West Bank novelist. Their differing opinions and differing lives play an important role in underlining their shared status as Palestinians under Israeli rule, and as women in a male-dominated society. Yet despite these contrasts, both mother and intellectual share the same struggle for freedom and dignity.

DOAN | Filmmakers

Michel Khleifi

Michel Khleifi was born in Nazareth in 1950. In 1970 he traveled to Belgium where he studied television and theatre directing. Considered the founder of modern Palestinian cinema, Khleifi produced and directed several full-length features and documentaries for international release and broadcast. His previous documentary feature, Fertile Memory (1980), was the first Palestinian film to be shown at the Cannes FF and was a groundbreaking work, both on a political and aesthetic level, treating the struggle for women's freedom and emancipation, across the generations and under occupation, in a haunting lyrical style that became all his own.

Michel Khleifi -- 99’, Arabic (Belgium/Palestine: 1980)