Palestinian Bedouin villagers gave filmmaker their 'houses, hearts and goats' to make Khaled & Nema

Published by The National

Short film shot in four days is about preserving heritage, identity and humanity, says Australian-Palestinian director

What are memories? Can they be retrieved? And how can we make them tangible enough to pass to the next generation? These are some of the questions posed by Australian-Palestinian filmmaker Suheil Dahdal, who is a professor at the American University of Sharjah, in Khaled & Nema.

Screened at the recent El Gouna Film Festival, the short production follows a young Bedouin Palestinian boy named Khaled, played by Oday Al-Saeedi, who hears that his village is about to be demolished by Israeli bulldozers. He knows he needs to do something and recalls the heroics of a man named Abu Maryam, played by Mohammed Bakri.

Abu Maryam, however, is a frail old man who suffers from Alzheimer’s and sits under a tree most days. After being told that Alzheimer’s means memory loss, Khaled starts gathering stories and objects from around the village to give to Abu Maryam. His hope is that it will help him regain his memories and stop the bulldozers. With the help of his goat, Nema, Khaled goes around asking the people in the village about their Abu Maryam stories.

“It was a dream to write a story about something that, at the time, was very strong in my mind, which was watching Bedouin Palestinian villages being demolished again and again,” Dahdal tells The National.

“It was a story of resilience because the Israelis would demolish the village and then the Bedouin, the Palestinians, would build it again. The Israelis would demolish the same village sometimes 20 to 30 times.”

It was not easy to film. First, Dahdal had to find a child from a Bedouin Palestinian village to play the lead role. Then, he had to find a goat that could act alongside him. He had do it all before the village he was filming in was indeed demolished.

The filming was done two years ago, Dahdal confirms, but had to be done quickly because the area was risky. “It was four days, four long days, of shooting,” he says. “The people in that Bedouin village gave us their houses. They gave us their time. They gave us their hearts. They gave us their goats.”

Dahdal wanted to show the importance Palestinians attach to telling their stories, carrying them from one generation to the next. “It is a transfer of knowledge,” he says. “Our heritage and our identity is transferred through oral stories and through the memory of villagers. Young people are going to carry that torch and move on.”

After two years of editing, Dahdal was thrilled to see his film debut at the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt, especially during the current political climate. “For El Gouna to put in a programme specifically about Palestine – called Windows To Palestine – was really good. I'm very happy my film was included.”

Dahdal hopes to secure more screenings for Khaled & Nema. He admits there have been difficulties, with some festivals turning the film away after outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7. But is still hopeful. He believes it is important for Palestinian filmmakers and artists to film their stories in hope that one day they will make it to cinemas around the world.

Despite not being raised in Palestine, Dahdal feels deeply connected. He describes his childhood as nomadic until he settled in Australia in his early 20s. He recalls his father describing each place they resided in as “a bus” that would eventually lead them home to Palestine. That explains his interest in telling their stories.

“The Palestinian story is a human story,” says Dahdal. “There will always be people who put us in a basket – 'heroes who can do all these amazing things; victims; or the oppressed'. But we are humans and our stories need to be told as humans.”

Dahdal received his doctorate from the University of Technology Sydney in Australia in 2014 and has been teaching at the American University of Sharjah since then.