Chronicle of a Disappearance

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Chronicle of a Disappearance
Chronicle of a Disappearance DVD cover
Directed by	Elia Suleiman
Produced by	Assaf Amir, Elia Suleiman
Written by	Elia Suleiman
Starring	Elia Suleiman, Nazira Suleiman
Distributed by	International Film Circuit (USA)
Release date(s)	October 31, 1997
Running time	88 minutes
Language	Arabic, Hebrew
IMDb profile

Chronicle of a Disappearance is a 1996 film by Israeli Arab film director and actor Elia Suleiman, his first feature film. It was shown in the 1996 Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Venezia, and was awarded the first edition "Luigi De Laurentiis" Prize for a debuting movie. It is generally a black comedy, though less dark than his later and more famous film Divine Intervention (2002).

Suleiman said of the film that it is "a journey in search of what it means to be Palestinian. It is a compilation of possible truths, transgressing genres and blending fact with fiction to explore the intertwined boundaries of storytelling, history and autobiography. The character E.S. is the filmmaker himself. He and the other characters wander through a social and political labyrinth in an attempt to break free from their ghettoized existence. The film explores the effects of ghettoization and marginalization on the Palestinian psyche." [1]

The film is divided into two major sections, with a third short segment in the middle, all loosely tied together as the story of Suleiman's return to the West Bank in the months immediately following the Oslo Accord. The first, and lightest, section is set in Nazareth; among the characters we are introduced to are two men who have set up a souvenir stand in apparently fruitless hope of the arrival of tourists. The short middle segment shows E.S. (Suleiman himself) getting up to speak at a conference on Palestinian film; the microphone immediately begins feeding back, and after a few minutes of feedback he leaves the podium; the third is more overtly political, including a segment that follows a young Arab woman in a search for an apartment that is just as fruitless as the two men's search for tourists: the Arabs won't rent to a lone woman, and the Jews won't rent to an Arab.