Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996)

“Chronicle of a Disappearance,” Elia Suleiman’s first feature film, is set in the tense period in the Israel-Palestinian peace process shortly after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu. When E.S., a Palestinian filmmaker played by Suleiman himself—flanked by a cast of family members and other non-actors—returns from a twelve-year exile in New York City, he finds himself in unfamiliar territory. Through a series of comic, often absurdist vignettes featuring, among others, a souvenir shop owner filling bottles of ‘holy water’ from his own tap and a Russian Orthodox cleric railing against tourists polluting the Sea of Galilee, Suleiman documents the loss of national identity amidst the Arab population of Israel.