Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
After an emotional exchange between a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee escalates, the men end up in a court case that gets national attention.
Ziad Doueiri's courtroom drama is a rare achievement in Middle Eastern cinema — a politically charged legal thriller that excavates decades of Lebanese and Palestinian trauma through an intimate personal dispute. The script is tightly constructed, escalating from a mundane neighborly conflict into a national flashpoint with genuine dramatic momentum. The two lead performances, particularly Kamel El Basha (who won Best Actor at Venice), are raw and nuanced. The film's novelty lies in its unflinching willingness to grant moral complexity to all sides of a deeply contentious historical conflict — something rarely attempted with this sophistication. The cinematography is competent and unshowy, functional rather than distinctive. The ending, while thematically resonant in its ambiguity, feels slightly anticlimactic given the mounting tension, and the courtroom revelations verge on melodrama in the final act.