Gender, State, and Religion in Maysaloun Hamoud's IN BETWEEN (IL/FR 2016)

Abstract

BAR BAHR (IN BETWEEN, Maysaloun Hamoud, IL/FR) is an Israeli-Palestinian feature film from 2016 that follows the lives of three young Palestinian women living together in Tel Aviv as they navigate the complexities of their religious, national, and gender identities. The film explores the conflicts of a new Palestinian generation living within a Jewish-majority society and constantly balancing both the demands of their Palestinian and/or Muslim tradition as well as the struggles of a modern and urban lifestyle in a secular environment. After a brief introduction to the postcolonial discourse on gender, state, and religion in the WANA region, my paper discusses key elements of IN BETWEEN with regard to the protagonists’ gender-state-religion arrangements. It becomes evident that the film’s narrative neither caters Orientalist or anti-Muslim stereotypes, nor does it align with the tradition of classic Palestinian cinema. I argue that the film’s achievement lies in this very suspension of essentialist notions. Ultimately, the film is also placed within a broader context of feminist cinema in WANA.