(BLOG) The Bitter Half

"In ‘Miral,’ Julian Schnabel’s feature film about Arab-Israeli relations, Israel is portrayed as the unequivocal villain.

Expectations ran high for Miral, a Palestinian saga directed by Julian Schnabel, an award-winning American Jewish film director. Based on an autobiographical novel and screenplay by Rula Jebreal, a Haifa-born Arab-Italian journalist with an Israeli passport, it seemed that the Israeli-French- Italian-Indian co-production starring Freida Pinto (of Slumdog Millionaire fame) was sure to become an artistic and boxoffice success, offering challenging new insights into the Palestinian psyche.

Instead Miral, which premiered on September 2 at the Venice Film Festival and on the Italian circuit, failed to receive one single star of recommendation in entertainment sections of newspapers. When Schnabel was asked by an Italian journalist how he thought the film would be received, he said, 'I expect to be told that the other side of the coin is not represented."