LEILA KHALED, HIJACKER

North American Premiere

For both Swedish filmmaker Lina Makboul and her childhood hero Leila Khaled, the Palestinian national narrative permeates their personal identity, sustaining a tie with the past and bolstering connections with other exiled Palestinians around the world.

Yet for Khaled, born in an independent Palestine, first exiled from her home and then ignored by the world, that identity has a far less ambivalent flavor than it does for Lina, born in Sweden and facing a world-largely created by Leila-where "Palestinian" brings to mind uncontrollable and bloodthirsty terrorism.

Makboul's portrait of Khaled is enlightening in a way that treatments of the nebulous dichotomy between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" rarely are. For Leila, the history of how Palestine became Israel is a profoundly personal wound. For Lina, the history of Palestine includes Leila's own story, and the question Lina returns to throughout the film, "Do you worry that you have given Palestinians a bad reputation?", reflects a divide between their perspectives that no amount of shared heritage can bridge. It is that divide that perhaps separates all of us here in the safety of the West from those who live intimately with the Palestinian struggle and its often bloody consequences.

-Caroline Small

Sponsored by
The Swedish Film Institute

DIRECTOR BIO
Lina Makboul was born in Sweden to Palestinian parents who are from Nablus on the West Bank. She started working as a journalist at the Swedish National Radio in 1996. In 1998 she began working with television at the Swedish National Television, SVT. This is her debut as a filmmaker.

Print Source:
Sara Yamashita Ruster, Swedish Film Institute
P.O. Box 27126
Borgvagen 1-5
Stockholm, SE-102 52
Sweden
46.8.665.1141
sara.ruster@sfi.se

6/15 at 5:30 PM

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