Origin: Palestine | Documentary | Director: Sameh Zoabi | 21 minutes

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The Handsome Groom

by Sameh Zoabi | Palestine | 2012 | 21 min |

In the short film A HANDSOME GROOM, the attractive Ahmad, a childhood
friend of director Sameh Zoabi, is still single at 35, quite a problematic
situation in a little Palestinian village of northern Israel. As his mother
gave up to find him a wife, Sameh takes over.

The filmmaker takes charge of his best friend's romantic fortunes when his
mother gives up trying to find him a wife in a Palestinian village in
northern Israel.
From a compilation of four films by Arab filmmakers called Family
Albums (2012), Artistic Producer Raed Andoni.

Added 4-9-2014:

HANDSOM GROOM in Australia

HANDSOM GROOM, Sameh Zoabi's contribution to the compilation FAMILY ALBUMS,
was shown at the Arab Film festival Australia in the cities of Sydney and
Canberra. The festival programmed several films dealing with questions of
mixed marriages in the Arab Middle East. See Sameh Zoabi in The Point
Magazine

Handsome Groom

New York-based Palestinian filmmaker, Sameh Zoabi, returns to his hometown
of Iksal, just north of Nazareth in Galilee, in Handsome Groom. He has a
mission: to find his childhood friend, Ahmed, 37, a wife.
Ahmed laments a life where he can't "step out of the norm" and the
perennial bachelor wants to meet his wife by "coincidence". It begs the
question: Why didn't the filmmaker try to find his friend a Jewish wife?
"We're a segregated community of almost wholly Palestinians. We don't mix
that much... It's hard to disconnect from the political divide," Mr Zoabi
said from Iksal.
Although some men in Iksal have Jewish wives from a more open era in the
1970s and 1980s, he said, the current climate has created a metaphorical
fence that hearts can't cross.
A 2007 survey of Israeli Jews found that half equated interracial marriage
with "national treason". Education campaigns in schools and vigilante
groups have worked against it, while a 2009 government-backed ad campaign
to encourage the reporting of interracial affairs was only withdrawn after
protests from US Jews.