Maysaloun Hamoud’s remarkable debut feature follows three strong and independent-minded Palestinian women who share an apartment in Tel Aviv. Away from the constraints of their families and tradition, they find themselves “in between” the free and unfettered lives they are aspiring to lead and the restrictions still imposed on them by society.
NIF Film Club discussed this film with NIF’s VP of Public Engagement Libby Lenkinski and director Maysaloun Hamoud.
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Maysaloun Hamoud is a Palestinian citizen of Israel who grew up in Budapest and then Be’er Sheva. She studied Middle Eastern studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2004, Hamoud was introduced to cinema by an animator friend, and she joined the Minshar School of Art in Tel-Aviv to study film. In 2010, Hamoud directed Sense of Morning, a short film inspired by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory of Forgetfulness. At the Minshar School of Art, one of Hamoud’s teachers was Shlomi Elkabetz, an Israeli film director. Hamoud developed her idea for the feature film Bar Bahar under his guidance and support. Hamoud’s film In Between (Bar Bahar) won the NETPAC Award for World or International Asian Film Premiere at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival It also won three prizes, including the Sebastiane Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in 2016. In 2017, Hamoud received the Women in Motion Young Talents Award at the Cannes Film Festival from Isabelle Huppert.