When I Saw You

Tracing Palestine’s History Through Good Films #3: 1967 The Six-day War
Japan Premiere!

Online Screening #3
Streaming Period: 11/8/2024 @0:00 – 11/14/2024 @23:59

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Written and directed by: Annemarie Jacir, Cinematographer: Helene Louvart, Editor: Annemarie Jacir, Panos Voutsaras, Starring: Mahmoud Asfa, Ruba Blal, Saleh Bakri. 2012, 93 min. In Arabic with English subtitles and Japanese Subtitles for Deaf and hard-of-hearing. The viewing is limited to within Japan.

Jordan, 1967. The world is alive with change: brimming with reawakened energy, new styles, music and an infectious sense of hope. In Jordan, a different kind of change is underway as tens of thousands of refugees pour across the border from Palestine. Having been separated from his father in the chaos of war, Tarek, 11, and his mother Ghaydaa, are amongst this latest wave of refugees. Placed in “temporary” refugee camps made up of tents and prefab houses until they would be able to return, they wait, like the generation before them who arrived in 1948. With difficulties adjusting to life in Harir camp and a longing to be reunited with his father, Tarek searches a way out, and discovers a new hope emerging with the times. Eventually his free spirit and curious nature lead him to a group of people on a journey that will change their lives.

When I Saw You is the story of people affected by the times around them, in search of something more in their lives. A journey full of adventure, love, humor, and the desire to be free, but most of all this is a story about that moment in a person’s life when he wakes up and finds the whole world is open and everything is possible – that moment you feel most alive.

Director: Annemarie Jacir (also Writer, Co-editor)
A Palestinian film director and a poet. She has made more than 16 films and has been highly regarded as the world’s first woman Palestinian film director and a member of Arab New Wave. Jacir grew up in Soudi Arabia as a daughter of Palestinian refugees and studied film at Columbia University. Like Twenty Impossibles (2003), a short film made during her school years, became the first Arab short film officially selected to the Cannes. It was also among the finalists for the Academy Award. It was available on Netflix in north America until recently. The Salt of This Sea (2008), her second film and her debut feature, was also officially selected to the Cannes, won 14 awards at various international film festivals including FIPRESCI Award, and was chosen as Palestine’s entry to teh Academy Award. This work was included in Online UPAF #1 (9/27-10/3) and will be screened at the 10th Uno Port Art Films in person in Okayama in January 2025. When I Saw You, her second feature, won numerous awards including the Best Asian Film Prize at the Berlin Film festival, and the Best Arab Film Prize at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and was chosen as Palestine’s entry to the Academy Award again. This film was made with all Arab fundings and with all Palestininan producers, which proposed a new possibility for Arab cinema. Jacir’s third feature Eajib was also selected as Palestine’s entry to the Academy Award.

Jacir has co-established Philistine Films, an independent film production company in Jordan specializing in the Arab world and Iran, and lives/works between Jordan and the West Bank. She has served as a judge at the Cannes. Her films have never been introduced in Japan. This year’s UPAF are showing two of her masterpieces for the first time in Japan.

Director’s Statement:
Since I have not been able to return to Ramallah, my understanding of exile and of being torn from one’s home has taken on more dimensions and deeper meanings. Being so close by living in Amman has not made it easier – only more difficult, more painful. A short drive and I can see Palestine from here. Over the valley I see the hills, even recognize cities. My friends, my family, my apartment in Ramallah is there – but I can no longer reach it. Palestine is becoming a memory and I struggle to hold the visuals, the reality of my life there, as close to me as I can.

This is how When I Saw You was born. The striking visual awareness of being so close to home and yet it being an impossible dream. The reality of seeing what you want but being unable to reach it. This film is about the depth of that landscape, its beauty and its cruelty. It’s also about how hope keeps us alive. And an important time period in our history where regular, every day people felt they could do something to change their lives, an infectious feeling full of dreams and change.

Tarek can’t understand the reality of borders and places being forbidden. But in actuality, the question is to be asked – who is really naïve? Tarek is a boy with such a beautiful sense of freedom, a desire to express himself, to live in a world where he is safe, and where he loves and is loved. He is different than other kids somehow and his mind tends towards logic and therefore the illogicality of borders is something he cannot comprehend.

For Ghaydaa, she has become serious and realistic in order to survive and protect herself and her loved ones, but there’s still a small spark inside of her, that fire that was extinguished long ago, which remains. It takes Tarek’s denial of all conventions, his own way of being and thinking, which brings her back to a place she once was.

When I Saw You is a portrait of hope – of that very specific moment in a person’s life when the whole world opens up. It is brief, it is specific to time and circumstances… maybe it’s gone by morning. But it’s there – it’s Director’s Statement there for that one moment where your heart feels like exploding and everything is possible.