Laila's Birthday

"The Essential Cinema: Films of the Middle East and Beyond" series runs from January 12 through February 16, 2010.

Laila's Birthday
Tues Jan 26, 7 PM
Written and directed by Rashid Masharawi, Laila's Birthday centers around a Palestinian taxi driver (and former judge) in Ramallah who wants to make his daughter’s 7th birthday a very special one, but first he must spend his day making money picking up passengers. Each person who gets in and out of his cab reveals a bit of their lives -- young lovers simply wanting a place to be together, a man recently freed from prison, a woman unable to decide whether to go to a hospital or cemetery first, and a man who leaves his cell phone in the cab and creates chaos for the cab driver. In the course of the day Masharawi shows a Palestinian city often in the news but never observed in such objective detail.