'Palestine 36' London film screening with The New Arab revisits Britain's colonial past

A panel of experts hailed Palestine 36, a new film by acclaimed Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir and co-produced Metafora Production, for its unflinching portrayal of Britain's colonial rule in Palestine and its lasting repercussions.

The film, which recounts the 1936–1939 Arab revolt against British occupation, was screened on 7 November at The Garden Cinema in London's Holborn in collaboration with and followed by a panel discussion hosted by The New Arab.

The event drew a full audience for Jacir's latest historical drama, which has been described as one of the most significant cinematic portrayals of early Palestinian resistance.

Set two decades after the Balfour Declaration in 1917, in which Britain gave Palestinian land to European Jews, Palestine 36 explores how British policies paved the way for dispossession and revolt. The story follows Yusuf, a young man who flees his rural village for Jerusalem’s charged streets, where he confronts colonial rule, rising migration, and the mounting unrest that sparks the 1936 uprising.

The post-screening discussion featured Dr Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian doctor, academic, and writer born in Jerusalem who was forced to flee during the 1948 Nakba, renowned journalist and actor Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, who appears in the film, and Palestinian translator, archivist, and editor Hazem Jamjoum.

The panel praised Jacir's ability to connect the past to the present, showing how British repression laid the foundations for modern-day injustice.

Palestine 36 employs rare archival footage and features an international cast including Jeremy Irons, Liam Cunningham, and Saleh Bakri, alongside a strong Palestinian ensemble. It portrays the brutal tools of British control - collective punishment, torture, detention camps, and the construction of a wall separating Palestine from Lebanon and Syria - drawing clear parallels with today's realities.

Shihab-Eldin called the film "a powerful antidote to collective amnesia".

"It forces us to confront the truth and our own complicity," he said. "One of the most important things this film does is remind the colonisers, in this context and others, that we have always resisted, and that we will always resist."

He added that the film's emphasis on peasants and women allows Palestinians to reclaim their narrative, noting that the term fellaheen, Arabic for farmers, becomes a source of pride rather than subjugation.

Dr Karmi said the film vividly shows the parallels between British colonial violence in the 1930s and Israel's current actions against Palestinians.

"After 1936, people were demoralised and leaderless. The stuffing was taken out of them," she said. "It became easier for the Zionists to expel them. It was a blow we've almost never recovered from."

Jamjoum discussed how Palestine 36 exposes Zionist settlement as a by-product of British imperial strategy.

"The reality of Israel is that it has always been an imperial project," he said. "The British facilitated Zionist settlement while most Jewish refugees were trying to go to Canada, the US, and Britain, but the UK closed its borders and funnelled them into Palestine because of its own antisemitism."

The panel agreed that the film arrives at a crucial moment. Shihab-Eldin said it comes at a time when "we're being gaslit by leaders who uphold the same systems that crushed the 1936 revolt, and are doing the same today during this genocide".

Speakers noted that Britain's colonial history in Palestine remains largely absent from UK classrooms, calling for the film to be shown in schools to help students understand the roots of Palestinian dispossession.

According to The Garden Cinema's review, Jacir "tackles the pre-Nakba peasant revolt of 1936, and the wider colonial context, in an ambitious and wide-reaching epic", weaving together a patchwork of characters - from Yusuf and his farming family to Jerusalem editor Amir and his journalist wife Khuloud.

Despite its scope, the film "creates real emotional engagement" and "rouses anger at the cruelty and injustice of the decades that would follow."

Jacir previously told The New Arab that she was drawn to the uprising because of how rarely it was discussed.

"It's a critical moment in our history that's almost never talked about," she said. "We always start with the Nakba, but what happened in 1936 set the stage for everything that came after - the loss of Palestine and the shaping of our modern struggle."

Filmed across Palestine, Jordan, and nearby regions, Palestine 36 was shot during the turbulent years following the start of the Gaza denocide in October 2023 and rising regional instability as Israel widened its military campaigns, targeting Lebanon, Yemen, Iran and Qatar.

Production was repeatedly halted due to violence and access restrictions, but Jacir said the project was essential, both artistically and emotionally, to maintain Palestinian presence and tell their true history.

The film, which was Palestine's official submission for the 2026 Academy Awards, has been screened at major international festivals and is widely regarded as a landmark work of historical cinema.