Completed - ENGLISH - Comedy - 90 minutes
Usually it takes only 45 minutes to drive from Jerusalem to Ramallah. But if you are a Palestinian smuggling the dead body of your father in your trunk this can become a turbulent adventure.
Year of production : 2013 Director(s) : Ali SAMADI AHADI Writer(s) : Gabriel BORNSTEIN, Karl-Dietmar MÖLLER-NAß Cast : Karim SALEH, Navid AKHAVAN, Julie ENGELBRECHT Producer(s) : Frank GEIGER (brave new work), Mohammad FAROKHMANESH (brave new work), Armin HOFMANN (brave new work)
With 45 MINUTES TO RAMALLAH director Ali Samadi Ahadi presents an entertaining, fast paced comedy which leads the audience through an absurd and crazy world - right across the borders from Israel to Palestine. RAFIK (Karim Saleh) is a smart Palestinian from Eastern Jerusalem who prefers to work in a restaurant in Europe instead of living together with his dominant father in Israel. Therefore he’s not very keen on travelling back to Jerusalem to attend the marriage of his unloved brother JAMAL (Navid Akhavan). Only to do his mother a favor he eventually accepts the invitation. But things get much worse than expected: When old quarrellings between the brothers and their father break out, the family’s patriarch dies by a heart attack. Unfortunately it has been his last wish to be buried at his birth place near Ramallah. The brothers are forced to go on a mission to smuggle the mortal remains of their father across the border. Usually it takes only 45 minutes to drive from Jerusalem to Ramallah. But when their car gets stolen – with the dead body of the father in its trunk – this alleged short trip turns into a turbulent adventure. Along the way the brothers meet beautiful car thief OLGA (Julie Engelbrecht), fall into the hands of the Israeli Police and a group of Palestinian activists. Since nobody believes their story they soon fnd themselves facing the guns of a fring squad.
Country(ies) : GERMANY