The Pessoptimist

“The Pessoptimist” film took as its starting point, parts from the first chapter of Emil Habibi’s novella “The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist”, written in 1974. In this chapter, Saeed recounts to us how his disappearance was due to an abduction carried out by extra terrestrials, who he long awaited for to save him from his existential crisis. The Pessoptimist is a portmanteau word combining pessimist and optimist. Palestinian writer Dalia Taha was commissioned to continue where the first chapter stops while maintaining the nonsensical, satirical style, where the starting point of the events is real and solid yet have a fantastical, absurd feel to it.

The film looks at the notion of the anti-hero. He, who finds himself drifting through events, without much control over their course of running. He, is blundering in an unpredictable life that withholds and contains all opposite aspects at the same time. He, lives in city that is surreal, where the relations of its inhabitants, with time and space, is confusing and bizarre. We see him floating through different traumatic experiences, that seem not to register in his consciousness. Until the last incident, in the last scene, when he becomes aware of the sum all his traumas.

IFFR Rotterdam Film Festival, Rotterdam, 2016.
Chapter 31, P21, London, 2016.
Mosaic Rooms- London,2016
Transart Berlin Triennial, Berlin, 2016.
Palest’in &out - Paris, Ramallah, Jericho, 2016
Al Hoash Gallery, Jerusalem, 2015.