Palestine-German Project ‘Chentian,’ by ‘Lemon Tree,’ ‘The Syrian Bride’ Scribe Suha Arraf, Adds Jordan Co-Producer…

Pedigreed Palestinian producer May Odeh (“Aisha Can’t Fly Away,” “A Useful Ghost,” “Hanging Gardens,”“200 Meters”) has added Jordan’s Rina Khoury from Arab Media Network ‘s Abu-Lughod Studios to her early list of backers of “Chentian,” helmed by “Lemon Tree” and “The Syrian Bride” scribe Suha Arraf.

The buzzy project, now in development, scooped the €35,000 ($41,650) Tin Post-Production Award at this year’s Göteborg Film Festival Nordic Film Market. It will next be pitched June 10 at the ECAM Forum co-production market in Madrid.

Odeh, who received the Variety MENA Talent Award in 2000, is producing for Odeh Films in Palestine and Germany’s Mayana Films, co-founded with Zorana Mušiki. The film is produced in association with German producer Lena Zimmerhackel and with support from the Arab Cultural Fund.

Set in “an isolated farming Palestinian village inside Israel” according to the logline, “Chentian” centers on two sisters, Nabila and Shams, bound by an exchange marriage to two brothers. When her husband dies in a tractor accident, Nabila who lives trapped in the same household as Shams and her husband Walid, starts to develop a forbidden desire for her brother-in-law. As Israeli authorities begin confiscating their land, personal tensions collide with political pressure.

“‘Chentian’ is a feminist and political film about the relationship between women’s bodies and the land. The body and the earth intersect through a strong symbolic layer, as both are sources of creation and women and the land alike are both given without limits,” Arraf told Variety, before expanding the core of the film.

“There can be no liberation of Palestine without the liberation of women,” she pointed out, adding: “In ‘Chentian,’ the female protagonists were raised to believe that they are not capable, that they lack the strength or ability to act. But when an opportunity finally presents itself, they discover that they are powerful and fully capable of doing anything.”

“’Chentian’ tells the story of repressed female potential and the lack of confidence women are often made to feel about their own abilities, until they come to realize how strong they truly are.

Underscoring the rural setting, a rarity as “most Palestinian films take place in refugee camps or cities,” Arraf said the atmosphere in the pic draws from her own experience of growing up until the age of 18 in “a beautiful Galilean village near the Lebanese border [the Israeli town of Mi’ilyaa]. “You may leave the village, but the village never leaves you,” she observed.

To pay for her university studies, she herself worked in tobacco farming, a harsh physical work “which taught me patience and faith in the belief that eventually you will see the result of what you have planted and cared for.”

“The relationship to the land is extremely important for us Palestinians,” Arraf insisted. “Most of our land has been confiscated, taken away to build roads, military camps, or settlements [Israelis] call ‘mitzpe’. I still remember being around 10 years-old, when large parts of my village’s land were confiscated. But the village resisted,” she said.

Going back to her feature, Arraf said locations, cast and crew are still up in the air as the film is in the financing stage. But she feels confident in the hands of Odeh, “a Palestinian like me who also comes from a small village. She is an exceptional producer and a fierce fighter for the films she believes in,” Arraf stressed.

Odeh for her part said that when first approached by Arraf a year and a half ago, she was convinced by the material and the helmer’s vision.

“I came on board ‘Chentian’ first of all as a Palestinian producer who is deeply committed to producing more films by women directors, and especially more stories where women are not on the margins, but truly at the center,” said Odeh. “What immediately moved me [with “Chentian”] is how the film speaks about very intimate female experiences while still reflecting larger political realities, without becoming didactic,” added the producer who will be looking at ECAM Forum for potential co-producers – including from Spain, sales agents and festival programmers.

Meanwhile Arraf whose first feature, the multi-awarded “Villa Touma,” hit the screens in 2014, is looking forward to her second directorial gig.

“I write for other directors because I truly love writing. But the kind of films I aspire to direct are different: visually layered with minimal dialogue, built on complex human relationships, symbolism, poetry and the beauty of the image itself,” she said.

Her next screenplay, entitled “Kingdom of Bees,” will also be female-focused. Inspired by a true story from her village that involved a woman from her own family, the story set against the backdrop of war in Lebanon will focus on the “golden generation of peasant women.”