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Born in Nazareth in 1950, Michel Khleifi is considered the founder of contemporary Palestinian cinema and one of its most original voices.
Born in Nazareth in 1950 to a Palestinian working-class family, Michel Khleifi is considered the founder of contemporary Palestinian cinema and one of its most original voices. After immigrating to Belgium in 1970, he studied theatre and television at INSAS, Brussels and worked for RTBF (Belgian television) before making his first feature‐length documentary, Fertile Memories (1980), which combined a lyrical aesthetic with a critical political engagement, as did Maloul Celebrates its Destruction (1985).
In 1987, he directed Wedding in Galilee, the first feature film entirely shot in Palestine by a Palestinian director, which premiered at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and won the International Critics Prize among many other awards. The film marked Palestinian cinema’s entry into the international scene. A further three features followed: Canticle of the Stones (1990), L’ordre du jour (1992) and Tale of the Three Jewels (1995), and documentaries Forbidden Marriages in the Holy Land (1996) and Route 181 – Fragments of a Journey in Palestine and Israel (2002, co‐directed with Eyal Sivan). Zindeeq (2009) won the Golden Muhr at the 2009 Dubai International Film Festival. Khleifi lives in Brussels, where he has taught filmmaking at INSAS for over thirty years, in addition to other teaching posts at Columbia University, St Joseph University in Beirut and AM Qattan Foundation in Palestine and Jordan.
