I 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.

I don't particularly have a good memory. I think history is many times just the text written by the victors. I wanted to counter that aspect.

I don't think there should be a Palestinian state because I don't believe in states.

A lot of narrative films leave you no space for anything else but eating popcorn. I want to go in the complete opposite direction. I have to evacuate all psychology, to be less a protagonist and more a presence.

I do not teach history in my films. I don't have a linear point of view or argument. What I do in my films is to live the human experience; human, whether in Nazareth or anywhere else in the world.

I don't want what you see on the screen to just be a brief notion of pleasure but something that lingers. The idea is to have the images revisited. I want it to be something that also enhances the soul. I want the moment of pleasure to produce an attachment.

Living more intensely, more lovingly, with more camaraderie, that is in itself resistance.