Farah Nabulsi’s debut feature, The Teacher, is a gripping portrayal of the struggles faced by the citizens of Palestine. Saleh Bakri delivers a powerful performance as Basem, loaded with tension and complexity.

Palestinian schoolteacher Basem (Saleh Bakri) struggles to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance with the chance of a new relationship with volunteer worker Lisa (Imogen Poots) and his emotional support for one of his students, Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman).

Despite all of the chaos and, death, and destruction occurring in the West Bank, English teacher Basem is almost a fount of calmness. He is there to guide a student who has had struggles academically due to his past imprisonment for protesting, and he honestly just wants the best for his cohort. He strives to keep these boys and young men out of the Israeli prisons, and that, while very difficult considering what is going on, means to be nonviolent, to not react with aggression to those who are committing crimes against you.

But there is more behind this calmness, a reason for it that is slowly eeked out throughout The Teacher that leaves you thoroughly riveted. Yet even this man’s forced patience is tested when another spout of violence that is too close to home to ignore ignites something within him where he cannot just sit on the fence. This is due to his almost-father-son relationship with Adam. He feels he must protect him from going down a similar path he did, even if morally, Adam is well within his rights to feel the way he does. It creates a wonderful dynamic as filmmaker Farah Nabulsi asks her audience what they would do in Basem’s shoes. Would you stay the course and continue to shepherd your flock as well as you can, or would you step up and be a more prominent figure in a resistance that has already taken so much from you?

An undercurrent of anger is omnipresent throughout The Teacher; the horror of what continues to go on in Palestine naturally fuels said anger, with Nabulsi leaving us under no illusion of the daily travesties that are happening there. Yet, she is also able to bring great complexity to her film. There are characters who do not want to keep having to resist the occupation they are enduring. They want to live as close to a normal life as possible, and this is where The Teacher really shines. You feel as if you are there; importantly, you feel every second of devastation throughout the film. Nabulsi ensures that she leaves us without a doubt about how dire this situation is for these people.

What doesn’t quite work as well as intended is the romantic subplot between Basem and Lisa; in a film that is so centred on Basem’s struggles with his past and his efforts to limit more destruction to his country, a romantic storyline thread doesn’t connect in the manner The Teacher wants it too. Both are convincing in this budding relationship, but it’s a matter of whether the film needs it and if it is, in fact, more of a distraction to the real meat of the story. Feeling more of a case of a lack of confidence in the primary story, which is needless as that main thread is as compelling as incredibly compelling.

Equally, it feels as if too much is placed within the film. We have a film about a former activist who faced the cruel hand of those in authority, mixed with a student-teacher paternal drama, which also has legal drama threads and hostage negotiation thrills. It is just a lot to place in one story, and The Teacher never gets that time to catch its breath and work out what it wants to be. However, Farah Nabulsi throws a lot on lead Saleh Bakri’s shoulders, and he magnificently carries it with aplomb. The film hinges on his performance, and while there is too much going on for a two-hour film. (as a series to allow all of the story points to fully be effective, The Teacher would have been tremendous as a limited series), he makes it work. It’s a powerhouse of a performance that has you on the edge of your seat.

He plays Basem as a man who is just exhausted with life, exhausted in having to quietly deal with the never-ending violence he sees every day, exhausted with the guilt he has over his own son and how he wants to try and ensure that students like Adam do not go down the route he did. You can see that he is also trying to be this new version of himself, almost as a means of self-therapy. He is doing everything he can mentally and emotionally to keep it together, not only for his young cohort but for himself. Underneath that calm surface is a man clinging on for dear life, trying to find any positivity he can to get himself through to the next day. His internal struggle is palpable, and Nabulsi tests this, again and again, with a multitude of heartbreaks to wear down her main character, and Bakir’s performance gives The Teacher a strong core.

When The Teacher works, it truly works, leaving the audience shaken at the raw portrayal of suffering and pain. Farah Nabulsi’s film is a poignant exploration of grief, both personal and collective, that is difficult to forget.

★★★ 3/4

The Teacher opens in NY on April 11th, Expands April 18th. For ticket information, please click here.

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