Origin: France | Documentary | Director: Norma Marcos | 30 minutes

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Critic, and filmmaker Norma Marcos was born in Palestine and, though she currently lives in Paris, frequently returns to work in Palestine and its territories. During work on one particular project, Marcos had travelled to Palestine to begin production when she was detained by Israeli authorities and jailed in Bethlehem. Marcos used a mini-DV camera to capture her experience during the seven weeks she spent in Bethlehem not being able to leave the town waiting for her case to be sorted out as the Israelis refused to let her leave through Ben Gurion airport like thousands of citizens of Palestinian origin. Marcos worked the footage, including interviews with an occasional visitor, her seven-year-old niece Yara, into a short documentary called Waiting For Ben Gurion. The film blends Marcos' own view of Bethlehem during her detainment with a child's perspective on life in the Middle East. The second reading of the film has more to do with how things are perceived, and the consequences of those ways of perceiving on our lives. The main character, in this case, a child, symbolizes that free eternal youthful state which can relatives' the hard reality of external structures. Her joyful and chaotic camera movement symbolizes a breakdown of the limiting internal structures through which we filter and perceive reality - in this case, the perceptions that wall us in and sow the seeds for future enclosures of the soul.

Norma Marcos, Palestinian with a French passport, is also a writer and screenwriter. Among other works, she has directed five movies, which were selected at a number of prestigious festivals around the world: Rotterdam (Netherlands), Rome, Montréal, San Francisco, Tetouan (Morocco, ) Beirut (Lebanon), Chicago, Boston, Baghdad and which were screened in more than 40 cinema theaters in France.

In 2004, she won the Grand Prix (Grand Prize, SOPADIN) for Best Screenplay among 357 scripts: "Nouzha" , which is an adaptation of a Palestinian novel by Sahar Khalifa, translated and edited by the prestigious publisher Flammarion.

In 2022 she completed a feature script: "Sami, Like Dew Drops on thorns".

Norma Marcos is the winner of several international awards, including: Winner of the SOPADIN competition for her feature film script Nouzha. Winner of Villa Medicis competition for the documentary Retrouver Jerusalem. Winner of "Voice of America " Radio training program. Winner of Knight Fellowships program at Stanford University. Winner of the Umverteilen Foundation author funding.

In 2013 her book "The Veil of Despair: Women, sexuality and feminism in Palestine" was published by Riveneuve editing house.

Her movies:
"The Veiled Hope" (1993)
"Nouzha" (2004)
"Waiting for Ben Gourion" (2006)
"Fragments of a Lost Palestine" (2010)
"Wahdon" (Alone - 2012)

Website:
https://normamarcos.com