what does it feel like to be a palestinian living under israel's military occupation? the year—long idf assault on gaza, triggered by hamas�*s october the 7th attack on israel, generates images of death and destruction every day. but the grim reality of news footage, whetherfrom gaza or the west bank, doesn't capture the deeper context, can't flesh out those human stories. my guest is farah nabulsi, a british—palestinian film—maker who wants audiences to see the palestinian experience in intimate, human, emotional detail. but is that possible in the current climate?

farah nabulsi, welcome to hardtalk. good to be here. you began your professional life as a young, successful investment banker in high finance. a decade ago, you committed yourself full—time to writing and making films. why the dramatic shift? the long story short is that i went home—home. so i am british — born, raised, educated in london — but my heritage is palestinian. and so, yes, around ten years ago, i went back to palestine for the first time as an adult, and i witnessed first—hand the discrimination, the injustice that's taking place in militarily occupied

and colonised palestine, witnessed the apartheid there as well. and despite thinking i knew what was going on, i realised that there was just no, erm, no substitute for seeing it with my own eyes, and came back to what i consider my life of privilege, and felt this deep desire to tell these human stories about the palestinians that i'd come across during my travels, as well as loving film and cinema. and the rest is history, i began... yeah. first, you've characterised it in a very political sense that you sort of had a political awakening. and it has to be said you've used terminology which the israelis would reject. but, of course, i know that's not going to stop you using terms like apartheid, but i'm just wondering whether the choice of film was because you had a deep connection to film—making already, or whether it was just a vehicle for that political messaging you wanted

to deliver. i've always loved cinema since i was a teenager, drama, theatre. so i was drawn to that, but also at the same time recognising that, you know, every coloniser in history works very hard to first dehumanise the indigenous population they are colonising, and then branding them as barbarians and terrorists, and then eventually denying they ever existed. and they do that for internal and external consumption so people of goodwill will not feel with that population, and then any and all atrocities can be carried out against that population without recourse. we can see that taking place in gaza right now, actually. it's a perfect example of the culmination of such dehumanisation. so, for me, i felt very drawn to this idea that cinema is one of the most powerful and meaningful, beautiful means of human communication and art forms that the world has ever known that can reverse that dehumanisation.

so it's kind of a connection of the two. how can i express myself creatively, but at the same time, yes, reverse what became very clear to me in terms of dehumanisation? when you went back to your parents�* homeland, did you feel a gulf between you, as it has to be said, a pretty privileged, western—living, british—palestinian person? a gulf between you and palestinians living under the reality of day to day military occupation? erm, in some ways. in some ways i felt very connected, actually. erm, and in other ways, the opening lines of my very first film, oceans of injustice, are, "we think we know and we think we feel with them, "and we think we understand the injustice "because we've read some book or some not—so—biased article, "or heard from a friend or watched a youtube video. "but there is so much more. "we have merely dipped our toes into the gentle tide "of this colossal injustice." and it is colossal. so, yes, connected by identity as a palestinian,

but as a human being, i was overwhelmed. overwhelmed. it seems to me that what you set out to do from those first short films through to the feature movie that you've made, the teacher — and we'll talk about that in detail — but what you've always sought to do is tell intimate, human stories. is that the beginning of all of your work, to alight upon a particular moment and story and human experience? absolutely. i think that's what i'm interested in, sort of the human dynamics, getting specific, i want you to connect with these...these characters. so for me, yes, that's my approach. and then you can say it's set in this kind of unjust socio—political landscape that is integral and part of the stories, of course, but it's not my focus. it's not where my interest lies. and just before we get to the teacher, just in terms of your style,

i mean, you're very much — going back to your background in finance — you're very much a self—taught film—maker, right? i mean, you never went to film school, and i'm sure some film—makers would sort of look at your cv and think, "well, how the heck does she know "how to make a film?" how did you learn how to make a film? erm, you know, stanley kubrick, the great stanley kubrick, said, "the best education "in film is to make one," and i couldn't agree more. so, yes, i didn't have any formal or even informal sort of education in film—making. but, you know, there's so much out there, films you can watch, of course, i revisited so many films of my past and, you know, masterclasses, books, all of it, and then made the films. and i sort ofjoke that, you know, my latest feature film is sort of my phd, as it were, erm, because it was a herculean task, to be honest. well, it sort of feels that way because it's a complex film, but also it is a film shot — and i'm imagining,

but i'm sure it's true — in the most difficult, tense and intense circumstances. just talk to me about the mechanics of getting the permissions, of hiring the crew, working with both palestinians and a small number of israelis. how on earth did all of this come together? so, yeah, so we shot in the west bank, in the sort of nablus area. the way it works is you sort of... i don't know if you know, but the israeli military have chopped up the west bank into areas a, b and c, and areas a are the more city centres where their... the military can enter, could put under curfew, can erm... ..can do what they like, really, but, generally, palestinian kind of administration. so we try to shoot in areas a more than areas b and c where there's a lot more of the military presence, more settlers, more checkpoints in areas b and c. we try to avoid it

but of course sometimes we are in areas b. so area a, we take permissions from the palestinian ministries who are very helpful and they provide those... ..if we need security and so forth. areas b, to be honest, erm, we don't take permissions from anyone because at the end of the day, like you said, it's militarily occupied territory and it's a bit bizarre, sort of asking for permission from the occupier in that sense, erm, this is still the west bank. so we go in and we shoot. and to be honest, i expect things like checkpoints and roadblocks when you're shooting in such an environment. but there is a mental emotional toll it takes on you when you're trying to sort of do justice in your film to the injustice that's taking place around you in real time. and an example i give is, during our rehearsal period, illegal israeli settlers descended on the village of burin, where the teacher, basem el—saleh, is actually from in the film, and they started to

torch the olive groves. i've witnessed that before, which is kind of how i ended up writing it in the story in the first place. but for it to be happening where you can almost see the smoke in the distance while you're trying to re—enact such a scene, erm, it's pretty overwhelming, it's pretty intense. well, the intensity of it is obvious. and for everybody, let's just play a clip which shows in the movie when the teacher, basem, realises thatjust outside the village, jewish settlers have set fire to an olive grove. and, of course, this, as you'vejust said, this does happen in real life. and in this particular case, the tragedy is that a young man that basim knows very well, yacoub, is there as the fire is set. he confronts the settlers, and basim and yacoub�*s brother, adam, race to the grove to see what's happened. let's play the clip.

gunshots. it's an extraordinarily powerful scene. and, of course, the perpetrator is the jewish settler who runs away at the end of that particular scene. there are also other israelis. for example, there's a lawyer who later in the film comes to represent yacoub�*s family. was it important to you to portray israelis in a complex way, rather than just have them be like the extreme settler, in this case, a murderer?

mm. you know, i mentioned earlier to you the idea of dehumanisation, and that's what palestinians have been on the receiving end of. what kind of person would i be if i then did the same? so for me, erm, as i sort of humanise the characters that i write, i don't feel the need to dehumanise anybody else in the process necessarily. and for me, it's...it�*s important to sort of, on the individual level, recognise people's humanity regardless of who they are and where they're from. and so i follow my creativity with these things, and that's how that ended up happening. there's extraordinary resonances because the film was made, of course, quite a long way before october the 7th, 2023, but now you're inviting audiences to see it with the knowledge of what happened on that day and what has happened in all of the days since then. i want to actually play a second clip, in which an american—jewish father,

whose israeli soldier son has been kidnapped by palestinians in the west bank, goes to meet basem, the teacher in his west bank school, because he feels basem may have some knowledge of what happened to his abducted son. these two people are meeting across a gulf, and yet there is a human connection between them. let's play this clip. lam truly... ..truly sorry for your loss. they'll keep him alive as long as it takes. i how do you know that? because they know that your people believe your son - is worth a thousand of mine.

extraordinary performance by saleh bakri, who plays basem. and as i'm watching that, i'm just wondering whether you think that the film resonates more powerfully today even than when you made it a couple of years ago? oh, absolutely. of course, absolutely. erm, you know, it couldn't be more pertinent to the time, erm, as israel conducts their genocide in gaza and the militarisation and everything happening in the west bank. you used the word "genocide" again. it's a word which... confidentially, by the way. happy to explain to you why. confidently, by the way. happy to explain to you why. well, the international court ofjustice is considering the south african government's case based upon the international genocide convention in the hague right now. we're not expecting a decision for months, maybe years. so you can't know what the decision is going

to be from the courts. absolutely. but, you know, i say it very confidently, stephen, because at the end of the day, i think anyone with eyes and half a brain can see it is. i mean, you know, when you have 15 of the sharpest legal minds on the planet in the highest court on the planet unanimously declare months ago, when things were half as bad as they are now, based on information and fact that israel is plausibly carrying out a genocide, the crime of all crimes... you can't see why, not just israelis, but many others around the world, whatever they think about the killing in gaza, reject the notion of genocide? yeah, but genocide is a process, it's not an event. so it's very dangerous to actually leave that definition because words do matter, and they do count at a time when it's just getting worse and worse. and given israel's track record, frankly, of violating, desecrating international law, notjust in the last year, but for decades, you have the icj ruling, the legal, authoritative opinion that israel's occupation is illegal, that the colonies,

the settlements are illegal, that there is apartheid. i think with that track record, stephen, i don't think they deserve the benefit of the doubt when millions of lives are in the balance. well, we both must wait for the icj to rule. but if one is talking about legal process and the icc�*s investigations, the international criminal court, it should be remembered, they are also investigating hamas. and there are people, and we know it from october the 7th, there are people in gaza who have an absolutist ideology which led them to mass killing, egregious mass killing on october the 7th. in your portrait of palestinian society, we don't meet any character with that philosophy, that approach. is it because you don't want to engage with them or it doesn't fit the narrative, or what?

i mean, first of all, i base this on the majority of palestinians i know and i have met. and also for me, this is, erm, this is a story that's an exploration of the real life conditions and circumstances and experiences that drive people to make the choices they make and take the actions they take, not to investigate or glorify, or whatever it is, any act or ideology. so i'm not so interested in the groups or... i'm interested in...in the human dynamics that drive people. erm... one thing i wanted to pick up on that i think it's really important for all of us to consider is what is happening to the next generation of palestinians. in a previous shorter film of yours, the present, which won awards all around the world, partly the film is so powerful because it's a very simple film about one man and his daughter trying to cross an israeli checkpoint to go shopping.

part of the power of it is because you film it partly through the kid's eyes. yasmin, the little girl in the film, sees her father being humiliated and sees the sort of... ..the potential violence that could befall them. but she's only, what, seven or eight years old? what do you think the long—term experience of occupation is doing to the next generation? it's...|t's devastating. it's absolutely breaking an entire generation, more than one generation, actually, of youth and children. when i see the scenes coming out of gaza, as well as the west bank, not just the death and destruction, but the humiliation — and that's a lot of what you're referring to in the present, in that short film — the degradation, watching their parents not only being killed or seriously injured, but humiliated. that's going to absolutely not just traumatise, but break so many of that generation.

you want your latest film, the teacher, all your films, to be seen by as wide an audience around the world as possible. to be a british—palestinian film—maker, making films in this arena about this subject matter at this particular time, how easy is it to get financing, then to get international distribution for your work? you know, it's interesting cos the short film the present really did phenomenally well. it had great distribution in the end, whether it was netflix worldwide, canal+, telefonica, so with that, for example, i can't complain. it had phenomenal distribution. now, as you said, it was a shorter, more simple story. i think i could have gone on to make a feature film as my debut that could have been anything under the sun and not focused, as it were, on palestine, and maybe my career.

and the studios probably would have loved it because of your recent track record, but on this occasion with the teacher, it's been a struggle, hasn't it? yes, because, in the end, i chose to tell the story that i wanted to tell, and i think that there are many people who maybe don't appreciate this narrative, so they're not interested in helping distribution, and then there are those who don't want to deal with what might be some kind of backlash, perhaps. well, you and a bunch of other arab—heritage film—makers and supporters who do not have that heritage signed a joint letter essentially accusing hollywood, the film industry in the united states of, quote—unquote, "dehumanising palestinians". do you think it is as systemic as that, an industry—wide problem? again, hollywood versus the whole industry. so, look, i mean, youjust need to look at films over

the decades where notjust palestinians, but the arab is depicted in ways that are very stereotypical and misrepresenting, so i do stand by that. it's quite clear. would it be... i don't want to mischaracterise your feelings, but would you be somebody who wants to build bridges to israeli creatives, israeli film—makers? i mean, i'm sure you know there are plenty of israeli film—makers who absolutely condemn the military occupation, the impact it's having on both israelis and palestinians. there are israeli film—makers who've made important films about 1948 and what really happened to those palestinians who were forced from their homes, some of whom were massacred. don't you want to work with people like that? i'm happy to work with anyone who doesn't deny the palestinians�* right to exist, and life and liberty of person and freedom, and against the occupation, against colonisation.

these are people, of course, i'd like to work with, regardless of where they're from. have you reached out to any of them? no, but, for example, the lawyer in the film, you know, this is an israeli, jewish—israeli actress. i believe in her politics, she believes in mine, and ok, great, we can work together. but anyone who denies our right to exist, and freedom and equality, these are not people i'd like to work with anywhere in the world. it's just that, as you well know, many creatives, notjust in the film industry but in writing and tv, are part of an artistic boycott of israel. i just wonder where you stand on that. again, look, i believe when we are talking about things like genocide and this ongoing illegal occupation and so forth, at some point, we have to engage in the concept of boycott, divestment, sanctions. i think the uk government should be engaging this. i think we should be taking a full audit of all our military, economic, financial,

academic and cultural connections and relationships with israel, unfortunately, because that seems to be the same way apartheid south africa was dismantled. sure, but if you're pro—boycott, then how can you fulfil what you just said would be a willingness and a wish to work with some of these israelis, who are absolutely — if i can put it this way — on your side. so, the cultural boycott, how that works is that if it's an individual and we're not getting any funding or connection with the israeli government or israeli funding, then, of course, you can work with somebody. the difference is if there's any funding or any government involvement, that you avoid it, assuming the politics are aligned and they believe in you. i want to end with something that you said recently that fascinates me. you said, "i wish i didn't actually feel compelled "to make the films that i make. "i wish, in a sense, that this brutal, ugly reality did not exist." are you implying there that as long as the situation

for palestinians is pretty much as it is, as long as the occupation continues, you can't imagine making any other sort of film, leaving this subject and going on to something completely different? erm... no, i believe that i will continue to make those films as long as this is existing, but i can also make other films in parallel, so it's not that i can't direct other films or write other films — i already, i am in the process of doing that — but i'm also writing something that is palestine—related as well, so i think i will continue. i have so many ideas that i'd like to write and make as well. so both, but ijust wish that, even when making films on palestine, that they could be beyond the violence, the brutality, the occupation. happier, happier times. indeed. farah nabulsi, thank you very much for joining me on hardtalk. thank you. thank you, thank you.

hello there. so far this week, it's generally not been as gloomy. there was some sunshine around for many places on tuesday, but some parts of northern ireland and southwest scotland stayed misty and murky all day. that fog is lifting as cloud comes in, lifting temperatures in the northwest but ahead of it with clearer skies in england and wales away from the southeast, it's going to be cold to start wednesday, temperatures close to freezing in places and a few mist and fog patches in northern england, the midlands towards the west country, too. those will lift through the morning, sunshine developing. it looks quite cloudy for western scotland, a bit damp to cloud for northern ireland, moving over the irish sea

into north west england and north wales, but further south and east we'll hang on to some sunshine — not a bad day. temperatures generally 11 degrees, i think, for england and wales. milder further north, typically 13 in scotland and northern ireland. those atlantic winds bringing in the cloud will push southwards behind that weak weather front overnight — that weather front bringing a little rain first thing in the far southeast. but following on from that much more cloud, so it's not going to be as cold to start on thursday. but sunshine, i think, is going to be harder to find. and in the far north of scotland, there could even be a few spots of rain returning here as well. temperatures going to be evening out because there's more cloud around, so typically 12, maybe 13 degrees. so quite mild, i think, on thursday. high pressure with us at the moment — starting to shrink away a little bit on friday. some stronger winds coming in ahead of this weather front, which will bring some rain into the northwest later on friday. stronger winds ahead of that, mind you. further south, though, we've got lighter winds. there could be some mist and fog patches lifting to give some sunshine,

but temperatures across southern parts of england and the midlands, parts of wales, 9—10 degrees. it'll be milder further north with those stronger atlantic winds. and that weather front bringing the rain in the northwest scoots southwards. not much rain on it at all, i think, on saturday, showers following, and then on sunday we could see another spell of rain developing and that'll push its way eastwards, mainly across northern areas. but as it clears away, the wind direction changes and we draw in some colder air. so some big changes on the way. i think through the rest of this week, we're likely to find more cloud around before we see a spell of wet weather over the weekend. but then as that clears away and things turn colder, we're likely to find some snow in parts of scotland.

live from washington, this is bbc news. the us says israel has not broken american law by restricting aid deliveries to gaza. donald trump taps elon musk to lead a new department tackling government efficiency — as the cabinet picks continue. and the archbishop of canterbury resigns over his handling of a decades—long abuse scandal in the church of england.

a us deadline for israel to improve humanitarian aid access in gaza has expired, without repercussions from the united states. us ambassador to the un, linda thomas—greenfield, said while israel has "taken some important steps" toward addressing america's demands, their actions will be continue to be monitored. last month, us secretary of state antony blinken gave israel an ultimatum of thirty days to ensure more aid trucks reached gaza daily or risk losing the supply of us weapons. as the deadline expired, the israeli army announced the opening of a new aid crossing into gaza, but un agencies still say israel has not done enough to meet the threshold. the deadline comes as israel's president isaac herzog is here in washington, holding talks with presidentjoe biden. our defence correspondent

jonathan beale has more details.