Karim Daoud Anaya

Yusuf spends much of Palestine 36 (2025) watching other people, and Karim Daoud Anaya makes that attention sympathetic. As a young villager moving between rural life and Jerusalem, he has plenty to take in, but the writing gives him too little room to develop. We warmed to his uncertainty, because his watchfulness suggests someone trying to understand the people around him. The difficulty is that a central character also needs to become distinct. Anaya holds our interest without quite overcoming the thinness of the part.

His feature debut came after nearly a decade of stage work with the Maxim Gorki Theater ensemble, so the newcomer label needs some qualification. The move to Annemarie Jacir's ensemble film puts him alongside Hiam Abbass and Yasmine Al Massri. He belongs comfortably in a cast whose persuasive performances make the broader characterisations easier to accept. His vulnerability is useful here, giving us a way into Yusuf without requiring the character to announce everything he feels.

Jacir gets more from that cast when faces are allowed to communicate small differences of feeling. The dialogue too often follows up with explanations, making people tell us what their acting has already conveyed. Anaya's quietness suits the better passages, but there is a limitation to a protagonist who observes so much and drives so little. The film needs a more developed Yusuf, and a sympathetic performance cannot supply all the detail that the writing leaves out.

For now, we would be wary of turning the restraint of this part into a claim about his entire screen style. The next useful test would be a character with more decisions to make, giving Anaya the chance to show how much of Yusuf's passivity belongs to the role. There is enough here to make us interested in that next performance. See Palestine 36 for the ensemble, rather than expecting its central character to be its most fully realised.