NYC: 77 Steps - a film by Ibtisam Mara'ana (Nov. 14)

For the fourth year running, Partners for Progressive Israel / Meretz USA is proud to partner with the Other Israel Film Festival and its mission, to educate through film and discussion about the minority populations in Israel with a focus on the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, who make up more than twenty percent of Israel's population.

This year, we are delighted to co-sponsor the screening of "77 Steps" - a film by Ibtisam Mara'ana (Israel, 2010, 56 minutes - View trailer for 77 Steps).

Monday, November 14, 8:45pm
Cinema Village at 22 East 12th Street (betw. University Place & 5th Ave.) in Manhattan

To purchase tickets, click here
For general ticket information, click here
For directions to Cinema Village, click here

About "77 Steps"

The personal journey of the director who leaves her Arab-Muslim village and moves to Tel-Aviv.

In an attempt to find an apartment in the city, she encounters discrimination and rejection by most landlords because of her Arab origins. She finally finds an apartment, and meets her neighbor Jonathan, a Jewish-Canadian man who immigrated to Israel. A love story evolves. 

Shortly after Ibtisam joins a left-wing political party (Meretz) and runs for the Knesset, Israel invades Gaza. Hundreds are killed. Ibtisam resigns from her party because of its support of the war. Ibtisam struggles over her Palestinian identity in the shadow of war and hatred, but does not relinquish her relationship with Jonathan. Yet something has gone sour.

Jonathan's family refuses to meet his girlfriend. Jonathan says: They can't forgo their image of their future daughter-in-law - Jewish, white and English-speaking. Ibtisam is also unable to reveal her relationship to her mother and keeps it a secret. 

When Jonathan's grandfather comes from Canada on a nostalgic trip to Kibbutz Ein-Dor, which he helped found in 1948, Ibtisam and Jonathan join him. It becomes an individual journey for each one of them one that takes them backwards in time and forward into the unknown, to memories and dreams, Nakba and Independence, Love and Hate, Longing and Loss. After this journey nothing can be the way it was before. There is no turning back.