Spartacus in Palestine

Elia Suleiman's 'The Time That Remains', Kubrick's 'Spartacus' and Omar El Akkad's 'One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This'

Children watching Spartacus in The Time That Remains by Elia Suleiman

There is a scene in Elia Suleiman's 2009 film The Time That Remains that has stuck with me for the past few days. Students at a Nazareth school, including a young Elia himself, are shown Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus. The year is 1970, three years into the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem that continues to this day. Nazareth, however, has been part of Israel since the 1948 Nakba when its defenders, including Elia's father Fuad, surrendered to the invading army and the town was forcibly integrated into the new state.

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