At the two important cultural events that took place over the Sukkot holiday (Feast of Tabernacles), Arab artists won the big prizes. The judges of the Haifa Film Festival gave the prize for the best feature film to Palestinian director Maha Haj for her movie "Personal Affairs," and the prize for best feature debut to Palestinian director Maysaloun Hamoud for her film "Not Here, Not There." At the Acre Fringe Theater Festival a few days earlier, Palestinian actor George Ibrahim won the prize for best actor for his role in the play "Palestine, Year Zero."
The prizes for these Palestinian artists is a badge of honor for the organizers of these events, in light of the pressure exerted on them by Minister of Culture Miri Regev. Regev instigated a public outcry when she argued, before the Acre Festival, that the state should look into whether the play "Palestine, Year Zero," written by actor Einat Weitzman, erodes the values of the State of Israel and mocks its symbols.
The main role in Weitzman's play is played by Palestinian actor George Ibrahim, familiar to the Israeli public as “Sami” from the popular children’s TV show "Sami and Susu," which was broadcast in the first years of Israeli television. Ibrahim was a regular guest in every living room in the country for many years. With the outbreak of the first intifada (1987) he decided to stop working in Israel, and since then has not appeared in front of an Israeli audience, except for the play "Romeo and Juliet," jointly produced by Jerusalem’s Khan Theater and the Arab Theater Al-Hakawati, a short time after the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, when it seemed that the conflict was nearing its end.
In his first interview since winning the Acre prize, Ibrahim told Al-Monitor that he decided to break from his practice and appear in an Israeli event after reading the play. The character he plays is a land appraiser who documents the destruction of Palestinian houses. Although no one is interested in his reports, he insists on documenting the destruction for the sake of history. The appraiser’s story connects to the actor’s personal story.
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