Happy Holidays 2024

The trials and tribulations of the members of an upper middle-class Palestinian family in Israel grappling with the moral repercussions of their actions while striving in vain to lead a normal life in a hostile society fraught with structural antagonism toward Arabs is the focus of the long-awaited sophomore effort by Scandar Copti.  

The narrative is divided into four interconnected chapters. One focuses on thirty-something Rami (Toufic Danial) as he attempts and fails to persuade his recently pregnant girlfriend Shirley (Shani Dahari) to abort their baby. The second see Rami’s mother, Hanah (Walaa Aoun) scrambling to organize the untimely wedding of her daughter amid a financial crisis that engulfs the family. A third centers on the struggle of Shirley’s sister Miri (Merav Mamorsky) in dealing with her daughter’s depression, while the fourth revolves around younger sister Fifi (Manar Shehab) who harbors secrets from her both her family and her new love interest Walid (Raed Burbara) that get exposed in the wake of a car accident.  

The Oscar-nominated Palestinian filmmaker made a splash in 2009 with his striking debut Ajami which earned him the Camera d’Or award in Cannes and an Oscar nomination the following year alongside his Israeli co-director Yaron Shani. Happy Holidays is a more intimate, more piercing affair than its predecessor: a thorough, perceptive dissection of ordinary lives torn between archaic traditions that are nonetheless closely linked to their threatened identity, and a grander xenophobic society that has and always will systematically marginalize them.      

Boasting a brilliant cast of non-professional actors and realized with remarkable naturalism, Copti’s gripping family drama is a highly empathetic portrait of lives in flux: a snapshot of a an oft-neglected dimension of the Palestinian experience. — Joseph Fahim