Ajyal Film Festival in Doha focused on Palestine this year, with a number of short and long features and documentaries. Laila Abbasi’s "Thank You For Banking With Us", which won the Jury Award for best film, was one of the long features, and in her words, the film "may have come out at the 'wrong moment' because it is not a film directly about the occupation and genocide, but the story of two sisters trying to reclaim their inheritance." That Palestinian films, or indeed films from the region, not only need to overcome the physical obstacles of being made but also need to come out at the right moment to be viewed is a stark reminder that the genocide in Gaza not only tears our hearts apart every single day but also does not leave us time to look at our own societies and selves and deal with our inner and personal demons.
"Thank You For Banking With Us" begins by introducing us to the ordinary lives of Mariam and Noura (inhabited to perfection by Clara Khoury and Yasmine al Massri, respectively), trying to make a living and keep their families together in Ramallah. Soon, Noura, the sister who is still living with their elderly dad, discovers him dead in his bed, and then the sisters’ odyssey to procure a fair share of their father’s wealth begins. We soon discover that the sisters don’t see eye to eye on many things, and in some ways, the film develops into an ‘odd-couple’ adventure film, where the two accomplices hardly agree on anything. Like all good family dramas, there’s a lot of tension between several members, and right at the moment when you feel a scene is too close for comfort, the semi-comical soundtrack starts, and then the pair get into Noura’s car and head for their new impossible mission.
The question of who will care for the elderly parent(s) is as old as time and even appears in Virginia Woolf’s seminal "Three Guineas." Woolf lists it as one of the jobs women do for free, and in the film, it has fallen to unmarried Noura. But we understand that she has not accepted this role naively. When the ambulance men arrive to take her father away to the hospital, she insists that they leave him with them for the evening. The moment I become a part of this odd couple is when the medics treat Noura as if she is hysterical and ask her whether they can speak to her husband or brother, and she says, pointing to her dead dad, "You want to speak to a man? Speak to him!" He is the only man Noura has been answerable to, and now that he is gone, she is an entirely free agent, and the law will have to deal with her on her own terms.
But in fact, of course, there is a brother. Almost. That is why the sisters have to act quickly before he comes from the U.S. and gets half of the inheritance, and the two sisters have to share the other half. Yes, under the Palestinian Authority, Shariah law is observed when it comes to inheritance. As Abbasi put beautifully in the press conference, in Palestine (and elsewhere in the Muslim world), women are treated as full human beings when it comes to most responsibilities, such as tax, but only half when it comes to inheritance. However, Abbasi’s film is not about Shariah being an unfair system: in fact, Noura takes her uncooperating uncle to task by telling him that if he is so keen on the Shariah, he will have to take care of her if the brother takes the lions’ share and she is left with very little as an unmarried woman. Is he prepared to do that?
Leaving the McGuffin of Shariah law aside, the film is about the two sisters getting to know one another better through their ordeal. Noura is struggling to make ends meet and to find a dependable romantic partner. In contrast, Mariam is done with her once romantic partner, now husband, and is having trouble containing her teenage son. They take their frustrations out on one another by criticizing each other’s lifestyle and true to life; at the end of the film, they are still not fully reconciled but are happy to cooperate with one another.
I have elsewhere commented that Palestinians must be a nation that says ‘alhamdulillah’ more than any other Muslim nation, and this gets a rain check in "Thank You For Banking With Us." The dad’s downstairs renter, whom we saw as a ‘nuisance’ in a scene earlier, reminds Mariam that she needs to say alhamdulillah or worse things will happen. Mariam complies. Through Mariam’s eyes, we understand that the neighbor was not a nuisance at all and that her complaint about the house was justified.
The film is full of moments like these when several characters’ motives are revealed by slight touches, not least the one with the female bank clerk who first makes the transaction that will ensure that the sisters get their fair share difficult. When Noura and Mariam find the magic solution and approach her, she shares her own story with a sentence, and we understand at that moment how crucial it is that women share their stories so that they can find allies in other women and maybe, though there is not much evidence for it in the film, in men.
