PLOT

End of September (2010) is a magical realist, psychological thriller written and directed by Sama Alshaibi and Ala’ Younis, and co produced with GreyScale Films. The film re-orients Palestinian history by linking the past, present, and fantastical future. It challenges the hopes for what an “end of occupation” would result in by looking forward and backward into the re-produced and recycled injustices of the
Palestinian plight.

Dalal (played by Majd Hijjawi) is the valiant Palestinian protagonist whose return to the Palestinian/Israeli state spans across time-periods. The past is based on historical accounts, and its future on speculative imaginings.

The film begins with Dalal in either a place of limbo or a futuristic state that is marked by the confusion of non-linear time. She encounters a mysterious world, suspicious and confused by the orientalist and commodified spiritual idolatry set within a religious vacuum in the “Holy Land” of Palestine. Dalal struggles with feelings of alienation in which she, the Palestinian and a fighter in the resistance, is now the stranger to the land.

Her journey has triggered a "return" to Jaffa with a group of Palestinian fedayeen (freedom fighters) by rubber boat in the late 1970’s. The cinematic unfolding depicts the fedayeen almost divorced of scene, where the soldiers stand out as stark and prominent under their green uniforms. Utilizing the cinematic style of almost a static shutter frame, it contextualizes the framework in which the international image of the “fedayeen” was set in history: young men without a past, country, or cause. In short, mass media has reduced their image to gun, body, uniform, and anger. Kidnappings and hijackings were historically the only framework in which the international world would see the agents of the Palestinian cause.

End of September recognizes the historical “making” of the Fedai image (divorced of scene and playing upon the image of gun/body/uniform) and how it lives in the popular imagination. However, the compulsory following of the dramatic quality of a kidnapped bus maintains the Fedayeen as iconic symbols of the Palestinian national movement but adds dimensions to their image by dignifying and humanizing the two main Fedai characters, Dalal and Jad (played by Firas Taybeh).

End of September invites interpretations that challenge and raise questions about whose story is credible and authentic. Her return with a bus links her current purpose with that of her Fedai past. She enters through a checkpoint guarded by soldiers, a rudimentary and weak likeness of the border agents of its dominant past. Dalal struggles with feelings of alienation in which she, the Palestinian, and the symbol of resistance, is the stranger to the land. This continued assault of injustice is magnified and re-presented in symbolic reminders of other violations over Palestinian land.

The film’s magical realist perspective characterizes Dalal’s representation and continued presence (without aging) in non-linear time shifts. In particular scenes, Dalal’s attempt to connect with this future, particularly Jad, blurs the film's distinction between the magical and reality. This technique also suggests questions about Palestine’s future, distancing the plot from a fixed outcome that is easily summarized. As such, the film’s conclusion extends past a singular definition and is alive and expansive in the audience's imagination and is reflective of the filmmakers’ multiplicitous intentions.

End of September concludes where the rational and irrational are not opposite and conflicting realities. They are in fact integrated within the lives of the film’s characters, and within the presence of what comprises historical “truth.” The demise of the either/or world of villains and heroes is marked by the decay of a controlled message in both popular culture and within our own society. End of September looks into the complexity of perception, of reality and of a vision for a Palestinian future.