Directors' Statement

How can we deliver to global audiences our stranger than fiction reality? Critical to the art of filmmaking is finding the right box of tools to use in order to ignite the imagination and to draw diverse audiences into a world that is being created. Our task was to find the right tools to deliver a story so powerful it can transcend its localised setting. Palestinian artists draw from their own experiences, their hard to believe reality and their stranger than fiction lives. Our stories write themselves, but they are overwhelming in their extraordinary details and are so shocking to the point of making it difficult for the world to comprehend. And so Palestinian artists and storytellers are constantly crafting new and innovative methods in order to overcome the challenge of portraying their unfathomable reality under occupation. And this is simply what we have set out to do in How We Fall In Love. 

To tell this story, we carefully selected the most suitable tools at our disposal, and we hope to create a stunning poetic, visual and musical experience that can inform, uplift and inspire. We began with rich poetic text, breathing life into it through the power of animation. We believe that animation allows for a greater space of expression and has the ability to transform the imaginary. Infused with magic realism and poetic lyricism, we want our work to take our audiences not only into our world, but more importantly, beyond the stories we tell. In choosing the art for the 2D animation, we are cognisant of our heritage and that of many contemporary Palestinian artists who inspire us, including Ismail Shammout, Suleiman Mansour, Tayseer Barakat and Tammam al-Akhal.  We want to create and be part of the creation of a modern visual language that conveys our story and reflects our heritage, without falling into the trap of localism and tradition. We want to make a film that is local in its setting but accessible to universal audiences.