PALESTINE 36

Other movies
PRIMAVERA
Director: Damiano Michieletto
Primavera is a haunting story set in a vividly recreated Venice, a tale of art and music, opportunity and repression. Damiano Michieletto’s drama transports us to the Ospedale della Pietà in the early 1700s, an orphanage where musically gifted girls perform new works as part of a lucrative orchestra. When Antonio Vivaldi is hired, he identifies Cecilia’s clear talent and makes her first violin, but her fate has been long-since foretold. Tecla Insolia plays Cecilia with a tenderness that cuts through time — her predicament reverberating across the ages. While not completely factual, Vivaldi did teach at the Ospedale for 40 years, and the film is based on a literary novel whose core truth resonates here.
NORMAL
Director: Ben Wheatley
Normal's night of reckoning and west-meets-east thrills and blood-spills is dark, absurdly funny and drenched in its own B movie with A movie viewing sensibility. Back in trenchant Free Fire form, Ben Wheatley directs Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul, the Nobody movies) from a script by Odenkirk and John Wick creator Derek Kolstad. It's mid-winter, and Odenkirk is Ulysses, a laid-back, somewhat oblivious sheriff on a temporary job in a tiny Minnesota town where all is certainly not what it seems — as heavily signalled by an ultra-violent prologue featuring a yakuza standoff in Osaka. Normal is the name of this burg of 1,890 cheerful inhabitants (including cameos from Henry Winkler and Lena Headey), but the film is decidedly anything but.
DESERT WARRIOR
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Rupert Wyatt's Desert Warrior is set in seventh-century Arabia at a time of feuding tribes vying for power and supremacy. Courageous Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart) refuses to serve as concubine to the merciless Sassanid Emperor Kisra (Sir Ben Kingsley). Escaping with her father, King Numan (Ghassan Massoud) into the vast and unforgiving desert, Princess Hind is pursued by Kisra’s mercenary, Jalabzeen (Sharlto Copley) and his bloodthirsty troops. Father and daughter are forced to trust a mysterious bandit (Anthony Mackie). Against all odds, Princess Hind unites the fractious tribes against the powerful invading military of the Sassanid Empire. In an epic showdown, the Battle of Ze Qar will forever change the Arabian Peninsula and echo throughout history.