When I Saw You, the second film from Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir, is a gentle tale of young boy Tarek, who is placed in a refugee camp in Jordan with his mother. Set in 1967, a time when thousands of Palestinian refugees were placed in the camp, Jacir’s film describes the longing felt by the people of Palestine at that time to return to their homes.
Mahmoud Asfa plays Tarek, and is by far the highlight of the film. An intelligent, curious child, Tarek is frustrated by the confines of the grim camp, and is desperate to return home to find his father. He decides to leave, and meets a fedayeen group who take him under their wing, and eventually teach him how to be a soldier.
The main issue with the film that is incredibly hard to ignore, is that the narrative seems to play out as a sort of adventure for Tarek.
Mahmoud Asfa plays Tarek, and is by far the highlight of the film. An intelligent, curious child, Tarek is frustrated by the confines of the grim camp, and is desperate to return home to find his father. He decides to leave, and meets a fedayeen group who take him under their wing, and eventually teach him how to be a soldier.
The main issue with the film that is incredibly hard to ignore, is that the narrative seems to play out as a sort of adventure for Tarek.
- 6/5/2014
- by Nia Childs
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
When I saw When I Saw You (Isa: The Match Factory) in Toronto, I wrote about its director Annemarie Jacir ♀, as a Woman to Watch. Jacir is part of a new wave of Arab filmmakers who have made a name on the international scene. She earned her Mfa in film at Columbia University in New York City. She lives in Jordan after being exiled from Israel, which opposed the politics in her films. Jacir was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema and Variety's Rab Pack: The Arab New Wave.
The child (Mahmoud Asfa) who runs away from the refugee camp where he and his mother are placed in order to return home to find his (presumed dead) father was remarkable and carried much of the film. I am happy to hear he's exploring beyond the Middle Eastern lands. This is the first time a Jordanian actor has been nominated for the Young Artists Award in California. Mahmoud Asfa, from Irbid, is one of only five nominees, selected for his role in the award-winning Jordanian-Palestinian co-production When I Saw You (Lamma Shoftak) written and directed by Annemarie Jacir.
The Award Envelopes will be opened on Sunday, May 5, 2013 in the Empire Ballroom of the Sportsmen's Lodge Hotel, Studio City, California. Congratulations Mahmoud Asfa and best of luck at the 34th Annual Awards!
Best Performance In An International Feature Film
Young Actor Nominees
Mahmoud Asfa Teo Gutierrez Romero Rick Lens Émilien Néron Antoine Olivier Pilon
"When I Saw You" ( لما شفتك ) "Infancia Clandestina" (Clandestine Childhood) "Kauwboy" (Jackdaw Boy) "Monsieur Lazhar" (Mister Lazhar) "Les Pee-Wee 3D"
Jordan Argentina Netherlands Canada Canada
The Young Artist Foundation together with The Social Relations of Knowledge Institute, Inc. congratulates all Nominees.
For a full list of nominees: Young Artist Awards
For more news follow When I Saw You Facebook Page...
The child (Mahmoud Asfa) who runs away from the refugee camp where he and his mother are placed in order to return home to find his (presumed dead) father was remarkable and carried much of the film. I am happy to hear he's exploring beyond the Middle Eastern lands. This is the first time a Jordanian actor has been nominated for the Young Artists Award in California. Mahmoud Asfa, from Irbid, is one of only five nominees, selected for his role in the award-winning Jordanian-Palestinian co-production When I Saw You (Lamma Shoftak) written and directed by Annemarie Jacir.
The Award Envelopes will be opened on Sunday, May 5, 2013 in the Empire Ballroom of the Sportsmen's Lodge Hotel, Studio City, California. Congratulations Mahmoud Asfa and best of luck at the 34th Annual Awards!
Best Performance In An International Feature Film
Young Actor Nominees
Mahmoud Asfa Teo Gutierrez Romero Rick Lens Émilien Néron Antoine Olivier Pilon
"When I Saw You" ( لما شفتك ) "Infancia Clandestina" (Clandestine Childhood) "Kauwboy" (Jackdaw Boy) "Monsieur Lazhar" (Mister Lazhar) "Les Pee-Wee 3D"
Jordan Argentina Netherlands Canada Canada
The Young Artist Foundation together with The Social Relations of Knowledge Institute, Inc. congratulates all Nominees.
For a full list of nominees: Young Artist Awards
For more news follow When I Saw You Facebook Page...
- 4/18/2013
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Best Foreign Language Film Oscar 2013: 71 submissions A record 71 countries, including first-timer Kenya, have submitted movies for the 2013 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. (See below.) Entries range from France’s international blockbuster The Intouchables to Cambodia’s first submission in 18 years and the Southeast Asian country’s second submission ever: Lost Loves. (Photo: The Palestinian territories’ Oscar 2013 entry, Annemarie Jacir’s When I Saw You, with Mahmoud Asfa.) Also in the running are Christian Petzold’s Barbara (Germany), winner of the Best Director Silver Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival; Kim ki-duk’s Pietà, winner of the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice [...]...
- 10/9/2012
- by Anna Robinson
- Alt Film Guide
Seeing is Believing: Jacir Revisits Historical Period of Palestinian Refugees in Sophomore Feature
Director Annemarie Jacir’s much celebrated 2008 film, Salt of This Sea, was a hypothetical drama about a Brooklyn born Palestinian woman who travels back to the land of her origins to retrieve her recently deceased grandfather’s money. What she encounters is a ruthless history of repossession and she quickly discovers that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is alive and well, and, American or not, she falls on the side of a repressed minority. And for those who criticized Jacir’s film for her protagonist’s histrionic naïveté and markedly American reactions to her dramatic situation, her new follow-up film, When I See You provides us with a similarly constructed main character, albeit one whose immaturity is more forgivable as it’s a young male child. However, this period piece leaves behind much of the colorful flourishes of Jacir’s first feature,...
Director Annemarie Jacir’s much celebrated 2008 film, Salt of This Sea, was a hypothetical drama about a Brooklyn born Palestinian woman who travels back to the land of her origins to retrieve her recently deceased grandfather’s money. What she encounters is a ruthless history of repossession and she quickly discovers that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is alive and well, and, American or not, she falls on the side of a repressed minority. And for those who criticized Jacir’s film for her protagonist’s histrionic naïveté and markedly American reactions to her dramatic situation, her new follow-up film, When I See You provides us with a similarly constructed main character, albeit one whose immaturity is more forgivable as it’s a young male child. However, this period piece leaves behind much of the colorful flourishes of Jacir’s first feature,...
- 9/9/2012
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Leave it to writer/director Annemarie Jacir to make an American more or less indoctrinated to side with the Israelis in the war for the Holy Land see her people’s freedom fighters (fadayee) in a sympathetic light. The first ever female Palestinian director—her debut feature Salt of the Sea was the region’s 2008 Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film—Jacir introduces us to the Harir Refugee Camp of 1967 Jordan through the eyes of an innocent. Young Tarek (Mahmoud Asfa) knows nothing about the fight raging or the deaths mounting, to him his displacement was a choice he’d like to overturn. Wanting to simply return home, find his father, and go on living with his own bathroom and kinder teacher, he will do whatever it takes to put his family back together.
لما شفتك [When I Saw You] isn’t solely about his journey home, however, as both his mother Ghaydaa...
لما شفتك [When I Saw You] isn’t solely about his journey home, however, as both his mother Ghaydaa...
- 9/7/2012
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Screening in the Toronto's International Film Festival's Contemporary World Cinema program, Annemarie Jacir's "When I Saw You" is her follow-up to her award-winning debut "Salt of This Sea." Set in 1967 Jordan, the film follows an eleven-year old boy and his mother who are displaced to a refugee camp after the occupation of their West Bank village. Indiewire has an exclusive trailer for the film below. But first check out its synopsis as provided by Tiff: In 1967, Arab states waged a second war against Israel with the objective of liberating Palestine. They were defeated, and the Israeli army deployed into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in these territories fled the military occupation to refugee camps in neighbouring Arab countries, joining the thousands of refugees that had settled in camps more than two decades earlier in 1948. Free-spirited eleven-year-old Tarek (Mahmoud Asfa) and his...
- 8/28/2012
- by Peter Knegt
- Indiewire
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