PALESTINIAN FILMMAKER Hanna Elias' "The Olive Harvest" garnered prizes in several international film festivals during 2003. In Cairo, it captured the Best Arab Film award for producers Kamran Elahian and Elias and the Special Jury Award for director Elias. In San Francisco, it took second prize, and will represent the Palestinian Authority in the foreign-language category in next year's Oscar competition.

Elias has come a long way from the first time this writer saw him as a young rosy-cheeked student, fresh from his native Jerusalem. The occasion was an assembly in UCLA's cavernous Ackerman Hall, where Elias stood in front of several thousand students and challenged the speaker, Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane, as to why he claimed Elias should be banned from returning to his home city of Jerusalem while Jews the world over are welcome.

Even though Elias' English wasn't that good in 1983, he managed to convince many in the audience that Kahane was a racist.

The same passionate patriotism that made Elias' challenge to the radical rabbi so indelible permeates "The Olive Harvest," a story depicting the Palestinians' attachment to their land.

The film, shot during the November 2000 olive harvest, stars Muhammad Bacri as the father of two daughters, Raeda (Raeda Adon) and Arren (Arren Umari), and portrays their relationship with two brothers from the village, Mazen (Mazen Saade) and Taher (Taher Najeeb).

The film opens as Mazen returns to his village after serving 15 years in an Israeli prison. His crime? He set fire to partially constructed Israeli settler homes which would have encroached on his village's olive groves.

Mazen is a poet and a man tied to his village. His younger brother, Taher, a journalist, is an active member of Settlement Watch. "The olive harvest is not for me," he says. "I would rather be fighting settlers." Taher is secretly in love with Raeda, but the two have promised to wait to announce their engagement until the older Mazen takes a bride.

Muhammad's health is failing, and he asks his older daughter, Arren, to leave her job as a social worker in the city and return to the village. "Have you ever seen one of these trees take a bus to the city?" he admonishes her.

Sweeping panoramas of olive and citrus tree orchards render an idyllic mood to the film-until, that is, the viewer watches ubiquitous Israeli bulldozers carve up the pastoral landscape.

There are touching scenes in which the two sisters giggle and share secrets over a kiss stolen by an admirer. Elias subtly reveals to the Western audience that Palestinian women, no matter how sophisticated, must remain chaste and free of any sexual rumor before marriage.

The plot thickens as Raeda's affection for Taher erodes as she realizes Mazen shares her love of the land.

Shortly before he was to take "The Olive Harvest" to Filmfest DC's "Arabian Sights" series in the nation's capitol, Elias discussed the process of finding a financial backer for his first feature length film.

"I received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to produce a film about my father and me driving through the West Bank," he explained. "With the onset of Intifada Two, this was impossible, so I asked the Foundation to re-direct the funds to produce 'The Olive Harvest.' Fortunately, they were open-minded."

Elias' qualifications for receiving the coveted Rockefeller grant include his work as a producer of the joint Israeli-Palestinian production of "Sesame Street," and his collaboration with the United Nations in 1998 and 1999 on a series of films about women of Palestine.

The Palestinian director currently is prospecting for a distributor for "The Olive Harvest."

"I want someone who really understands the Middle East and who seeks peace and understanding between both sides," Elias said. "The ideal distributor would be a well-connected, powerful liberal Jew who wants to change the negative image of Palestinians and Israelis."

During a press conference, Elias admitted to reporters he did not have a written script when he started shooting "The Olive Harvest." Is this his own innovative style? he was asked.

"Let me give you some history on this film," he responded. "'The Olive Harvest' was a long time in the making. While I was working as a U.N. consultant, I traveled through the West Bank to see where TV stations were needed. I was moved by the seemingly endless groves of olive trees dating to the Roman occupation. Then I heard a voice ask me, 'Why did you leave us?' I decided at that point to make a film that would prove I never did leave Palestine. When we suddenly had to shift from a road trip through the West Bank to a new project for the Rockefeller Foundation, the olive tree vision took over."

Asked whether he confronted challenges from the Israelis or Palestinians during the filming process, the filmmaker replied, "Whenever our film crew was questioned by Israeli soldiers, we told them we were shooting an anti-drug documentary. I particularly wanted to capture on film a cameo of [Palestine Authority President Yasser] Arafat carrying out his official duties. So the day he was scheduled to meet the head of the Chinese parliament, I flashed my U.N. card to the PA protocol people and managed to capture that open air diplomatic moment on film."

Was it his decision to keep the script simple that made him depict the olive grove owner as the father of only two daughters and no sons? After all, this reporter pointed out, two daughters make a pretty small family for rural Palestinians.

"This is beyond me, " Elias responded. "It was the decision of my subconscious. Likewise, I could ask why the two brothers, Mazen and Taher, did not have parents. After two years of mulling this over, I interpret it as the reality that the Palestinian people do not have a mother or father figure. With all these displacements, we have no home in the sense of a mother and father who spread their wings to protect you. The Palestinians are abandoned on their own land. They have no sense of home. In addition, most Palestinians in Arab countries feel unwelcome, like orphans."

Some film critics have called Elias a living oxymoron: a male Arab feminist. When asked his reaction to this, he replied: "The fundamental problem in the Middle East is male energy. Nothing will change if women don't initiate change-we must help female energy to rise in the Middle East. The character of Raeda was my metaphor for the land."

Noting that people over 30 in the West Bank who viewed a showing of "The Olive Harvest" called it propaganda, but that the younger generation liked it, Elias said: "Most Palestinians over 30 have cast their world views in cement. They see everything in black and white. Young people are open to another perspective, they can see the gray area where there is right and wrong on each side. The challenge is to focus on the 99 percent similarities in both people.

"Most interesting was the reaction of young Palestinian women. The film is only 10 percent politics, but most of the men get stuck there. Women see it as 90 percent a statement for their empowerment. When we screened it in East Jerusalem, women reacted to each nuance of the film. For me, that's an accomplishment. I don't mind the men's criticisms. I respect them and understand it. We were conditioned to be this way. The challenge is to break the mold."

Screen credits state that no animal or tree was damaged in the making of the film. How, then, was the olive grove's Mother Tree torched and yet not harmed?

Elias' answer was animated and, well, passionate. "I paid a hefty amount to a young man who found a burnt tree (the owner was trying to burn brush on a hillside and the fire accidentally engulfed the tree). I surveyed the scorched tree and paid a special effects man to attach fake branches with foliage. Three copper gas pipes were concealed on the back of the branches and then we poured special gasoline and ignited it. The best thing is the tree did not die. It was burned twice, but the interior wood wasn't burned. It is thriving today. If you view a still frame of a DVD or VHS version, you will see this is not the Mother Tree of the family olive grove. But then�that's the magic of the movies."

"The Olive Harvest" will be screened at 6:45 p.m. Oct. 22 and at 8:45 p.m. Oct. 24 at the Loews Cineplex, 4000 Wisconsin Ave. NW in Washington, DC as part of the ninth annual "Arabian Sights" film series. For information on other films in the series, visit .

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Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.

This article was published in the November 2004 Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is used here with permission.