Given the success of Julian Schnabel’s previous film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), audiences will have high expectations when they go to see Miral, his most recent feature. Like The Diving Bell, Miral is based on an autobiographical story. Although author Rula Jebreal calls her book a novel, as certain characters and situations are combined, Miral is closely based on her own experiences, and Jebreal says that everything she describes in the novel really happened. Like the novel, the film focuses on four Palestinian female characters: Hind, Nadia, Fatima and Miral. Hind Husseini was in her thirties when the state of Israel was being established. One day in 1948 she came across a large group of Palestinian children, newly orphaned by the Deir Yassin massacre. She immediately took them back to her large house. More and more children were sent to her, and she turned her house into a girls’ school and orphanage called ‘Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi’: The Arab Children’s Home. Rula Jebreal says that she is one of many children whom Hind saved, in more ways than one. In the film and the novel, Jebreal is represented by the character Miral: when her mother, Nadia, commits suicide, Miral’s father sends her to Hind’s school. As a teenager, Miral feels compelled to support violent resistance against the Israelis, but Hind insists that education is the only way forward. Miral’s aunt, Fatima, is the film’s example of the fate that awaits those who resort to terrorism.

At the press conference for Miral, one of the journalists pointed out that a film like Paradise Now (Hany Abu-Assad’s 2005 fiction film focused on Palestinian suicide bombers) will ultimately be less controversial than Miral. It is far easier to sympathise with an orphaned little girl than a grown-up male extremist, so Miral is more likely to increase concern for the Palestinian people. Also, since Miral’s director is Jewish, it is more difficult to dismiss the film’s sympathy for the Palestianians as a partisan or fringe perspective. Yet the film is not about sympathising for a particular side: it is about sympathy for human suffering. The specific context in which that suffering take place is reduced to mere background.

Ideally, this film will raise awareness about Hind’s girls’ school and orphanage: it has continued to exist since Hind’s death in 1994, but takes in far fewer orphans because of restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the area. Rula Jebreal says that three possible fates await orphaned girls in refugee camps: marriage at age 13, prostitution, or recruitment by fanatics. In the period immediately following 9/11, commentators pointed out that suicide bombers were typically uneducated young men with few prospects in life, individuals who were therefore ripe to be indoctrinated with a murderous purpose. Education as a tool against extremism is an idea that seems to have faded away in popular consciousness: it is high time for a film that reiterates the importance of this peaceful and constructive method of empowerment.

I am happy to recommend Julian Schnabel’s film for its message alone. But Miral owes most of its impact to Rula Jebreal’s own story and to the moving performances of the actors: most notably Hiam Abbas as Hind, Frieda Pinto as Miral, and Alexander Siddig as Miral’s father. As an artist, Schnabel naturally tried to bring his own visual contribution to the story. The best examples of this are his striking use of enormous capital lettering to indicate which character will be the focus in each section of the film. His use of different film stocks also reflects an artistic sensibility: a saturated Technicolor look and deep purple lettering lends a retro lushness to the opening credits. The camerawork is much less successful, however. Schnabel says that he used a handheld camera to reflect the frenetic and chaotic nature of certain situations, which is entirely reasonable. However, the use of virtuoso camera rolls and bizarre low angles at other moment in the film becomes dizzying and intrusive. Sometimes a director needs to step back stylistically, so that the visual treatment doesn’t overpower the story: this is especially the case with a story as important as Miral’s.