Layla’s boyfriend Anwar ( Jalal Masrwa) arrives at the family compound and tries to convince Suliman how honorable he and his intentions are. When Suliman returns from his honeymoon and begins to set up a separate household for his newest bride, these problems come to a boil. However innocent it may be so far, the relationship violates two cardinal rules in this culture: women are not supposed to fraternize with men they’re not related to, and they’re expected to marry within their tribe-often in unions arranged by their elders rather than stemming from love. Mother comes down hard on her daughter’s indiscretion. Jalila is a grounded, determined sort and shows no outward resentment at the traditional imposition of not only having to share her husband with a much younger woman but of having to roll out the metaphorical red carpet for her too.Īs the wedding preoccupies her, Jalila also discovers from Layla’s cell phone that she’s apparently carrying on a romance with a boy at her school.
Suliman is about to take a second wife and his first, Jalila ( Ruba Blal), is obliged to stage the wedding celebration.
Such a practice surely marks the girl as belonging to a different world than previous generations, as do her cell phone and the fact that she’s attending university.īut back at the family home, things aren’t nearly so forward-leaning. On a desert road, gruff paterfamilias Suliman ( Hitham Omari) gives a driving lesson to his teenage daughter Layla ( Lamis Ammar). For another, the fact that Zexer is a Jewish Israeli can’t help but make some viewers wonder how people from the world that’s depicted would view her critique of their culture.Īs it opens, the film makes the point that this culture has plenty of contact with modernity, at least in various superficial ways. For one thing, the village culture at the film’s center is presented with very little context, and the story’s central family seems oddly removed from a larger network of relationships and influences that would normally be implicit to such lives. But it inevitably leaves questions about what’s not shown or examined, which keep it from being fully satisfying. What "Sand Storm" shows and dramatizes comes across as persuasive and finely wrought.
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