When Annemarie Jacir pitched her thesis film at graduate school some 20 years ago, her advisor told her the best place for her script was in the garbage. It was an ambitious project for the young Columbia University student: A Palestinian film crew navigating their way through Israeli checkpoints in occupied territory as they attempt to reach Jerusalem certainly didn’t fit the traditional mold of thesis short films.
But the brilliance of Jacir and her work is that she is not a filmmaker who conforms. Steadfast in her ambition to bring this story to light, she put the project together through old-fashioned crowdfunding, sheer determination and grit. She shot the 17-minute short film, titled Like Twenty Impossibles, across a year and a half in occupied Palestine during the Second Intifada, one of the region’s most violent times in modern history, a brave feat for the then twentysomething writer, director and editor.
Source: Annemarie Jacir On Her Journey To Preserve Palestinian Cinema – Deadline