Theft of Fire
Fall Grants 2020 - Development Stage
Amer Shomali / Feature Documentary / Palestine, Canada, Qatar / Original Language: Arabic / Interests: Animation, Action, Thriller, Based on a True Story, Creative Documentary
Synopsis
A failing museum and a career hampered by the Israeli Occupation push Naji, a struggling Palestinian artist, to undertake a daring heist inside a prison in the Negev Desert. Inside, Naji must outwit Moshe Dayan, an Israeli military legend, who has hidden away a massive collection of stolen Palestinian archaeology. Naji carefully executes his heist as he deals with mistrust from his fellow inmates. Ultimately, Naji is faced with a decision—choose his own personal revenge or help his fellow inmates in the Palestinian resistance. As Naji gets closer to finding the artefacts, he also must come to terms with a tragic loss that has been haunting him since childhood. Shifting between documentary and narrative, ‘Theft of Fire’ is a heist film where the audience becomes part of the robbery. At its core, the film questions how a people can tell their narrative when history is being stolen out from under their feet.
Credits
- Director
- Amer Shomali
- Screenwriter
- Amer Shomali
- Producer
- Rashid Abdelhamid, Ina Fichman
- Production Company
- Made in Palestine
About the Director
Amer Shomali is a Palestinian multidisciplinary artist, using painting, films, digital media, installations and comics as tools to explore and interact with the sociopolitical scene in Palestine. Much of Shomali’s work examines the creation and the use of the Palestinian revolution’s iconography. Shomali co-directed an award-winning animated documentary, ‘The Wanted 18’, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. The film was awarded the best documentary award in Abu Dhabi, Carthage, Traverse City, and Al-Jazeera Film Festivals. ‘The Wanted 18’ was in the official submission lists for the foreign language and documentary categories of the 88th Oscars.