Palestinian director Muayad Alayan’s stressful second feature, The Reports on Sarah & Saleem, establishes its central conceit instantly.
The film opens on a man counting money and doing paperwork at his small kitchen table. Before we know it there’s a forceful knock at the door and he’s being violently arrested by Israeli security forces.
We quickly learn the backstory: Saleem (Adeeb Safadi) is a Palestinian delivery man from East Jerusalem who has been having an affair with Sarah (Sivane Kretchner), an Israeli café owner from West Jerusalem. Both are somewhat unhappily married: he to the pregnant Bisan (Maisa Abd Elhadi), she to Israeli army colonel David (Ishai Golan).
Saleem has picked up some black-market work running goods from the occupied territories into Jerusalem, and Sarah joins him on his work route one evening. Once he knocks off for the night, he convinces her to come out for a drink. It’s a decision that reverberates throughout the rest of the film, leading to an escalating series of events that all build into a portrait of a relationship entirely at the mercy of the political forces surrounding it.
Incorporating handheld camerawork that hews closely to his characters, Alayan sketches the surrounding detail of this relationship, mostly with a precise touch. Whereas Sarah runs a genteel café complete with ambient soft music, Saleem faces barely concealed hostility from his delivery boss.
Read the film review by Anders Furze on the Daily Review.