In her first feature documentary, Palestinian-German filmmaker Pary El-Qalqili is determined to break down the walls her estranged Palestinian father has built up over his many years in exile. Shot over the course of one year in Germany and Palestine, this tender and sorrowful film shows El-Qalqili trying to understand her father’s anger and isolation as a displaced foreigner in a land that is not his own. 
BPFF: Tell us a little more about The Turtle’s Rage. PQ: For me, it’s a very personal, autobiographical movie which — through the conflict between father and daughter — tries to tell something about the story of Palestinians in exile. It’s about the life of an exiled Palestinian and the conflict between generations of not understanding the pain of exile, while not having lived in Palestine. It’s about exiled Palestinians who emotionally understand it, but who have never lived there themselves. In the beginning, I didn’t know that this would be a father-daughter film. I thought that it was just be about my father. It was during the shooting that I found out that I needed the dynamic between father and daughter to tell something about him. My “character” in the movie is a medium to get close to him. BPFF: Your father left your family in Germany when you were 12 years old to return to his ancestral land of Qalqilya to fulfill his lifelong dream of building a house there. He was deported 10 years later. How did you then decide to film a documentary about him? PQ: It was Summer 2009, a few years after he was expelled from Israel. And I saw his depression and how defeated he was by the expulsion and that his big dream of returning to Palestine and building a house there had failed. I saw his pain and I saw his anger at many things. I just wanted to understand what’s behind this anger. I also wanted to understand why this dream of Palestine was so big for him. He didn’t really talk about it when I was growing up, he was occupied with being unemployed in Germany and having a failed marriage, and missing Palestine. He was withdrawing in his turtle shell. [Palestine] was always present, just without words. BPFF: What were the biggest challenges of having your father as your main subject? PQ: The biggest challenge was maybe to keep the distance. I was very much emotionally involved, fighting a lot with him, but at the same time, I had to see him as a character for a movie. I had to see the different nuances. And I had to see myself as a character in a movie, too. This was very hard — to be a director and protagonist at the same time. The challenge with him was also him trusting me. At the beginning of filming, he thought the movie would be a recognition of his whole story as a Palestinian and his expulsion, but he noticed that as a daughter, I was also angry at him for leaving us. He sometimes wanted to stop or quit the whole movie, especially when I was asking questions that were hurting him, which were touching some dark holes. This was the challenge — to keep the trust between us. BPFF: Your film had many raw emotions and moments between you and your father, having to do with difficult issues surrounding exile, diaspora, emotional trauma, and isolation. How did you deal the emotional challenges that come with that? PQ: Well, I think that for me, as a Palestinian in exile, it’s a political act to make an autobiographical movie. Because if your story as a people is made invisible, and most of the media or the official narration of history is skewed, then it is your duty as a Palestinian to tell your own family’s story — to add something to that history. BPFF: Did you find that filming The Turtle’s Rage made you understand your father better? Have you become closer? PQ: Yes, actually now we are much closer. During the shooting, it was really hard. When we were shooting in Palestine for example, it was difficult for him to see me as a director, and not like the gentle daughter who would accept everything from him. But in the end, when he got all the recognition from the audiences in Germany, I think it really relieved him to get so much empathy and understanding for his pain. This was really important for him. After the movie was shown all around the world, he actually calmed down. It made him feel good that people were finally listening and understanding him. I think one of the biggest traumas of the Palestinians is that no one is listening. They know that people see the injustice, maybe, but they see that no one acts upon that or they don’t really understand it. BPFF: Has your father gone back to Palestine since the filming? PQ: Yes, he has. But just to visit for a short time. And always by the land bridge. BPFF: Why “The Turtle’s Rage” as a title? PQ: Before shooting the movie, I spent a time writing about my father. This image of the turtle evolved in that process. He was always sitting in the cellar, in the basement, and not moving a lot. I had the feeling he was going to a dark space, being by himself, and life was very slow. And then sometimes, when I would ask a question about Palestine, he would get very angry. So writing about him, this expression — “the turtle’s rage” — came up; this metaphorical image of his inner state. I needed that metaphor in order to understand and get closer to him.
–Alia Gilbert for BPFF
screens October 19, 2014 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at 3 pm as part of a thematic slot called Diaspora Blues.