Someone like myself is not from one place. I am in total identification with the New York, French, and Palestine experience and do not stop at the borders of identity.
Elia SuleimanI don't really know what people's perception about Palestinians.All art is to better life. We want to create hope and share with others. Create more pleasure, and object to despair. Really it's about that. A space where we can be less aggressed upon.
Elia SuleimanI don't think you can strategize to be poetic and neither can you strategize to be funny. It is not a tool, it is itself - it comes from the moment, from the character, from the background, from the streets.
Elia SuleimanTo think of a film from the point of view of a tank barrel is already so inhumanly positioned. This is when film can reveal itself scandalously.
Elia SuleimanI try to use fiction in order to reduce the potentiality of something being true. We produce our own memories so I'm not sure of truth.
Elia SuleimanPalestine is an extremely familiar place to me. Someone like me who lives everywhere in the world cannot be contained. If my hope and ambitions are in the right place, you can judge that in my films. I want to make films that diffuse any local notion. Cinema criss-crosses borders and check points. If the film is good, then it's universal.
Elia Suleiman