As the Land is the Language

Documentary, France/Israel 1998, 59 min., orig. subtitles

As the Land is the Language is a documentary (in the original Arabic version with English subtitles) about the life of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Mahmoud Darwish, who was born on March 13, 1941 in al-Birwa in Galilee and died on August 9, 2008 in Houston, is considered one of the greatest Arab poets of our time. Together with his family, he fled Palestine in 1948, returned secretly one year later, and spent decades in exile in Akko, Haifa, Cyprus, Tunis, Amman, Paris, Cairo, Beirut and Ramallah. The Moroccan-Arab Jewess Simone Bitton accompanies Darwish through the various places he spent in exile, including Palestine. She retraces his life and work – as a poet, thinker and author – through various areas of political and cultural tension.

As part of: “Poetry and Politics: Reading Mahmoud Darwish in Berlin”