Rehearsing for Justice is directed by Palestinian filmmaker Dalia AlKury, who resides in Norway. Filming is currently in progress and the film is shot in Jordan, where a lot of the Palestinians in diaspora reside.

The film begins when AlKury asks actors in Jordan to go on an extreme audition where they are able to go from a sense of helplessness, to a complete state of agency and power.
– The idea is that they role play an angry character that is able to handcuff an Israeli war criminal in a hotel room somewhere in Europe, and proceed with whatever they find appropriate for a dramatic and emotionally cathartic twist, Alcury explains.
– The audition invited 19 different participants and resulted with 19 extremely intense and revealing moments of truths, for both the director and actors.

Through discussions with the prominent Palestinian liberation psychologist Samah Jabr, the film takes a deeper dive into the dark psyche of the humiliated witness and adds a layer where Dalia investigates the dangers of keeping the lid on the rage that is brewing in the witnesses minds.

– The actors who seemed to be role playing a version of themselves, revealed that perhaps, there is no right way to face this human enemy. To kill him would be wrong, and to set him free with the absence of justice, felt equally wrong, the director said.

– Even if fictionalized, the simple staging of confronting a war criminal paused the uncomfortable ethical question: how can we resist the fascists without turning into fascists ourselves? The tensions between what is defined as aggression, vs. what is defined as political resistance and self-defence, was hard to answer once the actors embodied these feelings of frustration and anger. Of course, these actors have been close witnesses of the genocide for a year and a half and so there was much to emotionally process while they stared into the war criminal´s eyes, she explains.

AlKury describes herself as being «torn and seeking to find words to defend feelings that are normally shamed, that are taboo and that are harmful».
– It can’t be that this simple experiment should be so difficult. Is there something in the scene that is missing? Something that can be re-staged to act in an indisputable “just” or “fair” way? And what is actually “fair” and to whom? These uncomfortable questions are observed and investigated as collective intergenerational traumas and a symptomatic political problem rather than a personal character flaw of the actors, she said.

Although the experiment isn’t scientific, the film maker hopes it’s a «provocative invitation to re-examine the psychological dangers of oppressing the witness’ need for meaningful solidarity».
– How can Palestinians and their supporters control themselves should they coincidently run into a militant Zionist during or after the genocide? The experiment showed that there is no right answer, but there are some wrong ones. The filmmaker now plans to visit countries that have gone through genocides in the past. She hopes to learn what is transferable from the experience of reconciling and reckoning between enemies.
– Our staging in this film will inspire how (anyone it happens to) can stage the perfect encounter with the Israeli war criminal should any of us have to be faced with one. This film is not for the faint-hearted.

AlKury has previously used a similar cinematic device in her documentary Privacy of Wounds (2018). In total, she has made 15 films, many of which explore cultural taboos in the Arab world, such as the feature-length film Possessed by Djinn (2015).

For the list of other projects, see Norwegian version.