My brilliant, truly compassionate doctor thinks the Palestinians have earned all the trouble they get. He tells me they are constantly perpetrating attacks upon Israelis. Like many of us, he easily recalls the terrorist plane hijackings between 1968 to 1972, and the heinous Oct. 7 attack on innocents at a music festival. So, he’s dumbfounded that I plan to go to the West Bank this summer to stand in solidarity with Palestinians.
“The Teacher” is a vehicle for people like my doctor. It compresses 70 years of conflicted history into a palpable drama about a winsome teacher with a secret mission, a spirited blond Brit who falls in love, and two Palestinian brothers on the precipice of deadly retaliation. Soon, intermixed into their lives are a young Israeli hostage and his frantic parents. You end up caring about them all.
“The Teacher” is based on true events, not only the indiscriminate razing of Palestinian homes, the unprovoked burning of olive trees by illegal Israeli settlers, and the incarceration of women, children and men off Palestinian streets, but also the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was set free in 2011 in exchange for 1,027 Palestinians prisoners.
The teacher, Basem El-Saleh, is softly played by award-winning Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri.
While El-Saleh teaches English at a boys’ school, Adam (Muhammad Abed El Rahman), his prize student who also lives across the street from him, notices something else about his teacher’s life that transcends the instruction he gets in class.
The catalyzing event is that after Israeli soldiers bulldoze Adam’s home into rubble, Adam’s impassioned older brother, Yacoub (coincidentally played by Saleh Bakri’s younger brother, Mahmoud Bakri), is infuriated. Basem keeps him from retaliating on the spot. Shortly after, for an unknown reason, settlers sneak onto Adam’s family property and set fire to their olive trees. Both brothers run out bare-handed to stop them. The older arrives first and is shot dead. The younger brother seethes with the injustice and wants to avenge the murder.
In the meantime, a third story is in play, the kidnapping of an IDF soldier, Nathanial Cohen, by Palestinians who will only release him in exchange for 1,027 prisoners. Adam finds where this unfortunate fellow is hidden and makes a surprising choice.
“The Teacher” manifests sensitive storytelling and directing by British-Palestinian filmmaker and human rights activist, Farah Nabulsi. It’s a must-see for my doctor. Like so many, he has no time to go beyond news reports and newspaper headlines, much less read Jimmy Carter’s book on the matter to inform his position. So “The Teacher,” with under a two-hour runtime, is the most efficient primer for him.
Farah Nabulsi — the British-Palestinian director, screenwriter and producer — delivers a film well-executed and sensitively written, giving us more insight than we might expect. And it will also help explain that standing in solidarity with the Palestinians is actually standing with all the victims of the long-standing conflict for peace.
10/10
Credits
Director: Farah Nabulsi
Screenwriter: Farah Nabulsi
Editor: Mike Pike
Producers: Sawsan Asfari, Farah Nabulsi, Ossama Bawardi
Executive Producers: Rasha and Hassan Elmasry, Mohannad Malas, Riad Kamal, Sawsan Asfari, Farah Nabulsi
Co-Producers: Jacqueline de Croy, Isam Salfiti, Tony Tabatznik, Tarek Aggad, Luke Healy, Ghiath and Nadia Sukhtian Foundation
Cast: Saleh Bakri, Imogen Poots, Muhammad Abed El Rahman, Stanley Townsend, Paul Herzberg, Mahmoud Bakri, Andrea Irvine
Original Music: Alex Baranowski
Director of Photography: Gilles Porte, AFC
Country: United Kingdom, Palestine, Qatar
Language: English, Arabic, Hebrew
Runtime: 118 minutes
Release: April 11, 2025
Website and How to View: https://theteacher-film.com/buy-tickets
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