Origin: Palestine | Documentary | Director: Jumana Manna | 22 minutes

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“Whatever I’ve wanted I've done. I haven’t left a thing,” says Ahmad, the subject of Jumana Manna’s kaleidoscopic short documentary. While he speaks these words with some swagger, the underlying tone of his assertion betrays the weight of the Palestinian reality. Exploring the stereotypes of East Jerusalem “thug” culture, we see garages where men work interminably on a car, lathering its surfaces, barbershops tending to hair with meticulous care, and gyms where muscles get pumped.

Manna uses close-up fragments to construct an eroticized and parodic montage of bodies, objects and
places. Arabic pop songs provide ironic commentary on the images, which get intersected by snippets of dialogue, with the protagonist alternating between confessions of debauchery and debt, national poems and dirty jokes.

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