Elia Suleiman

The problem is that when you grow absolutely certain that all authorities are corrupt, then that would include the Palestinian authorities as…

— Elia Suleiman

I'm not in the business of saying just one thing about just one place. If you only see Palestine in my films,…

— Elia Suleiman

The desire to express in an art form and to compose a tableau and vignette whether it's humorous, burlesque, or poetic comes…

— Elia Suleiman

Silence can be intimidating, sometimes provocative, sometimes a form of resistance because it dislocates.

— Elia Suleiman

Israel, the Israelis, and the rest of the world have been brainwashed. They don't think of pre-1948, they have no idea Palestinians…

— Elia Suleiman

To think of a film from the point of view of a tank barrel is already so inhumanly positioned. This is when…

— Elia Suleiman

Living more intensely, more lovingly, with more camaraderie, that is in itself resistance.

— Elia Suleiman

I'm trying to use Palestine as a microcosm of the world, but maybe the world is a microcosm of Palestine. We're living…

— Elia Suleiman

People in power tend to find poetry dangerous to them because it is dislocating, they can't catch it, can't control it. They…

— Elia Suleiman

I am more at peace than I've ever known myself to be. My connectedness to the world is more intense. I am…

— Elia Suleiman

I don't particularly have a good memory. I think history is many times just the text written by the victors. I wanted…

— Elia Suleiman

There are a lot of questions that come out of the silence. It is so close to the infinite.

— Elia Suleiman

I don't think you can strategize to be poetic and neither can you strategize to be funny. It is not a tool,…

— Elia Suleiman

The Time that Remains is a way of interpreting a certain ambience or emotion. These are the stories that my father told…

— Elia Suleiman

A lot of narrative films leave you no space for anything else but eating popcorn. I want to go in the complete…

— Elia Suleiman

Palestine is about how we drink the water, whether we are being ecological or not. Palestine is our way of exercising our…

— Elia Suleiman

I try to use fiction in order to reduce the potentiality of something being true. We produce our own memories so I'm…

— Elia Suleiman

It's crucial to choose your work place - some places lend themselves to you and others don't.

— Elia Suleiman

I don't want what you see on the screen to just be a brief notion of pleasure but something that lingers. The…

— Elia Suleiman

It's important for me to not historicize. I work to diffuse the issue of identity and to intensify identification. You have to…

— Elia Suleiman

I think that whatever we express in terms of the potential truth is above all else about mobilizing ourselves for ourselves. We…

— Elia Suleiman

If a person just takes what is socio-political and geographical from the themes of my films then that's not enough. But if…

— Elia Suleiman

Palestine is an extremely familiar place to me. Someone like me who lives everywhere in the world cannot be contained. If my…

— Elia Suleiman

I don't really know what people's perception about Palestinians.All art is to better life. We want to create hope and share with…

— Elia Suleiman

Someone like myself is not from one place. I am in total identification with the New York, French, and Palestine experience and…

— Elia Suleiman