Yasmine Al Massri on Palestine 36
by Julia Smeaton
Annemarie Jacir’s fourth feature film, Palestine 36, premiered at Roy Thomson Hall on September 5th, 2025 as the first ever Arab film to be featured in the gala programme in TIFF’s fifty year run. Set in 1936 during the British occupation of Palestine, it focuses on an ensemble cast of characters in Jerusalem and the village of Al Basma. In attendance at a smaller screening the following Sunday were director Jacir and actors Karim Daoud, Yasmine Al Massri, Dhafer L'Abidine, and Billy Howle.
The Q&A session that followed was unlike any I’ve ever attended at the festival. The entire credits ran beginning to finish before the panel was started. Only one broad question was asked, and each actor spoke just once, for about five minutes each, all with very different and personal responses. As Jacir and Daoud, who plays the main character Yusuf, began their remarks, hardly any of the audience members took out their phones to take pictures or videos. The entire, 150-seat capacity cinema was completely present with the artists onstage, and entirely quiet when prompted by actress Yasmine Al Massri to join her in a moment of silence for Gaza.
Al Massri plays Khuloud Atef, the wife of prominent journalist and politician Amir Atef, who Dauod’s character Yusuf is an employee of. Khuloud is brilliant, alert, discerning, fashionable, funny, and steadfast in her ethics and devotion to her people. She writes under a male pseudonym for her husband’s newspaper, making her first appearance in the film dressed in Amir’s suit and hat, puffing at a cigarette and typing away at her next piece. She suffers no fools, not even her husband, and is determined to use her position of wealth and status to help protect her homeland. Al Massri used her Q&A response to share what playing Khuloud in Palestine 36 meant to her.
“When we shot this movie, when I stepped into Khuloud’s shoes, our people were already facing atrocities. And we were talking about them in numbers of dead bodies. We became a number. And it’s almost two years now, and we’re still talked about in numbers of starved bodies. So I did not give anything to Khuloud, she gave to me, because I was completely devastated. How can you shoot a movie when you’re witnessing this horror happening to your people? And I’m stepping into the shoes of an aristocrat. A lavish lifestyle. Palestinian aristocracy in Jerusalem in the ‘30s– something I’ve never heard of, because I’m born a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon. I never had this kind of role modelling. Khuloud saved me. Khuloud gave me sanity and a purpose, because Khuloud taught me that my story is not a story of death. It’s not a story of genocide, it’s not a story of occupation, a story of colonization. Khuloud gave me agency. She showed me how powerful Palestinian women were in the ‘30s, and I am a descendant of that power, of that resilience, of that wonderful feminism.”
She continued, “This movie built me up, it built my visual identity. It built me in music, words, and pictures, even in the costumes we wore. It rebuilt the past in a way that made me understand, we are dehumanized. We are a dehumanized nation. Because of course, the narrative was taken away from us. And this movie gave me agency over my narrative. More movies like this— you, being here in the room, receiving them with open hearts— that gives me hope, strength. That’s what stepping in Khaloud’s shoes did to me. Thank you.”
After the panel concluded, Al Massri lingered outside the theatre, listening and speaking to people with generosity, grace, and the same open heart she noted in the audience. Watching her embrace the Toronto festivalgoers, and feeling the room hold her and her colleagues in return, is an experience I will hold in my heart from here on out.
Al Massri can next be seen in adventure-comedy BornStars. Palestine 36 will screen in Vancouver and London this October and has been submitted as Palestine's entry to the 2026 Oscars for Best International Film.
