Before he’s seen in Terrence Malick’s The Way of the Wind––which will hopefully (maybe) arrive next year––Ali Suliman leads the acclaimed drama 200 Meters. Marking the feature debut by writer-director Ameen Neyfeh, the thriller follows Mustafa, a Palestinian construction worker living in a West Bank home a mere 200 meters away from his wife and children, on the other side of the Israeli border wall.
Though eligible for an Israeli ID, Mustafa sacrifices living with his family in resistance to what he believes are unjust laws enforced by the occupying Israeli government, so he instead uses his work permit to visit daily. The arrangement is functional, until one day Mustafa gets a call every parent dreads: his son has been seriously injured and brought to an Israeli hospital. Rushing to cross the border checkpoint, Mustafa is denied on a technicality. Stopping at nothing to reach his child, a 200-meter distance becomes a 200-kilometer odyssey, as the increasingly desperate Mustafa attempts to smuggle himself to the other side of the wall.
Ahead of a November 18 theatrical release at NYC’s Quad Cinema and a VOD debut on December 6, we’re pleased to exclusive debut the first trailer, courtesy Film Movement.
Logan Kenny said, “In a time where the Israeli occupation of Palestine is still causing the deaths of children, the separation of families, and the oppression of Palestinian citizens, a film like 200 Meters becomes even more necessary and relevant. Following a Palestinian father desperate to get to his ill son in spite of the obstacles of the Israeli regime, the film manages to showcase the horrors of structural oppression without ever crossing into misery porn. While there isn’t any healing for decades of trauma by the end, beauty and love can still be embraced.”
See the trailer below.
200 Meters opens at Quad Cinema on November 18 and will arrive on VOD on December 6.