‘The uprising (1936-39) itself arose only after non-violent resistance through petitions, protests, strikes, and boycotts was met with violent punishments.’ – Steve France reviewing PALESTINE HIJACKED in February 2023.
“That film was so sad, but I am glad I saw it.”
“It makes me feel so, so angry.”
– Two women leaving a cinema after seeing Palestine 36 by Anne-Marie Jacir.
The film tells the story of the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936 against British colonial rule and the policies stemming from the Balfour Declaration. The revolt began with a general strike that spread from the ports of Jaffa and Haifa into the countryside, where peasants refused to harvest their crops. It spread to the bazaars and the cities of Ramallah and Hebron, creating a template for popular resistance that would re-emerge in later Palestinian uprisings.
Palestine 36 cleverly interweaves archival footage of the British Mandate with a fictional story brought to life by Palestinian and British actors. The archival material gives a powerful sense of the extent of British control over Palestine.
The film also examines the Peel Commission and its partition proposals, portraying the process as a betrayal of the Palestinian population and as facilitating the dispossession of Palestinians and the establishment of a Jewish homeland through European settlement.
Palestine 36 also depicts British collusion in the illegal importation of weapons for use by Zionist paramilitary groups, including the Irgun and Haganah. It shows how the British Mandate authorities facilitated changes to the land system, disrupting the centuries-old Ottoman dunam-based land tenure system and enabling large parcels of land to be transferred to European Zionist immigrants and refugees.
The film depicts corruption by a local businessman, including an instance where a Zionist organisation paid the businessman’s wages. It shows him promoting the immigration of European Jewish refugees as a positive development—something that can supposedly be accommodated by the Palestinian population. The film provides testimony about the growing dispossession and displacement of peasant farmers in the countryside.
The film shows the wholesale destruction of the free press in Palestine by the British authorities. Despite Britain’s own laws and traditions embracing civil liberties, the Mandate authorities attack and destroy printing presses, detain people without trial, and use military force against protesters.
Intifada
What makes the film particularly powerful is the way it connects the events of 1936 with the continuing struggle of the Palestinian people. Ninety years later, the anger and resistance depicted in Palestine 36 have not disappeared.
Once and for all, the film places the genocide of 1948 and 2023-26 within a historical context. By implication, Palestine 36 exposes the lie of spontaneous revolt by Hamas on October 7th, 2023. Over 100 years of colonialism and dispossession of the Palestinians led to this revolt and the worldwide Palestinian struggle for freedom in their beloved homeland.
Jacir and her Palestinian production team found a partially standing village in the West Bank, near Nablus and outside Salfit. They spent about a year preparing it for the film, restoring the buildings in the style of the 1930s and planting crops that Palestinians would have grown at the time — including cotton and tobacco. They also built period machinery, a forge, British military equipment and even a bus.
All the best laid plans … settlers and the idf made it impossible for them to film after October 2023.
Jacir says the village was specifically inspired by al-Bassa, the Palestinian village associated with the 1938 British bus massacre, although the actual filming location near Salfit was a different village. She also drew on the architecture of Lifta, near Jerusalem.
The first day of filming was scheduled for 14 October 2023 — just one week after October 7. The production was shut down. The Israeli military’s subsequent restrictions and checkpoints made it impossible for the crew to get to the restored village.
Jacir herself explained:
“We restored a whole village near Nablus before shooting the main village scenes, but [then] we had to go elsewhere because the whole area was overrun by armed settlers.”
The production therefore moved much of the village filming to northern Jordan, where they rebuilt the necessary locations. They eventually returned to Palestine in November 2024 to complete filming
Palestine 36 is currently screening in Brisbane and at cinemas in other Australian cities.
Ian Curr, 3 September 2026
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