Salt of this Sea

This well-intentioned but implausible documentary-style drama sees Soraya (Hammad), an American whose family was exiled from Palestine in 1948, return to live in her family’s country and immediately face intense questioning and an invasive body search by Israeli security guards at the airport. Once on safe ground, Soraya act as our eyes and ears in Palestine, although you’d have to be blind and deaf to the situation to find any of her observations fresh or surprising.

In a piece of symmetry more written than real, she forms a friendship with a Palestinian man (Bakri) who’s as keen to leave Palestine as she is to stay. Most incredibly, the narrative gets bogged down in Soraya’s desire to recover her family’s meagre pre-1948 assets from the local bank – the inspiration for a ridiculous plot turn that sinks the film.