Salt of This Sea, an intelligent and provocative drama about Palestine released in 2008, leaps into action with archival shots of disturbing power, showing Israeli tanks crashing through walls and pulling down houses while planes drop bombs and frightened people flee the devastation by scrambling onto small boats and heading out to sea. This is documentary footage from the Israeli-Palestinian war of 1948, but it also recalls Israel's later policy of destroying Palestinian homes to punish and deter anti-Israel militants. The film thus opens on a viscerally distressing note.

The first scene after the credits is less violent but still unsettling, partly because moviegoers will recognize it as a routine event that ordinary people go through every day in airports around the world. Soraya, a young New Yorker of Palestinian ancestry, is entering Israel with her United States passport. Israeli airports are famous for their strict screening procedures, and sure enough, a female agent takes Soraya aside to ask her some questions "for her own security." Then two other agents interrogate her - the same questions keep coming, over and over - while her luggage is unpacked and searched, and finally she's swept with a metal detector and patted down for contraband. Finally she's allowed to go on her way, leaving us to wonder why all this double-checking and triple-checking had to be inflicted on someone who's obviously what she says she is: an American tourist paying a visit to a friend she met back home in Brooklyn.

But is Soraya really what she appears to be? A little later we see her chatting with some new acquaintances, and strong political views are very much on her mind. Why do Palestinians have to live under Israeli laws, she wants to know, and why can't they see how oppressed and exploited they are? Then another fact about Soraya surfaces: she has come to Palestine on a mission. Her grandfather was among the 70,000 Palestinians forced to leave the port city of Jaffa in 1948, and the British bank where he kept his savings is currently expanding its operations in Ramallah on the Israeli-occupied West Bank; now Soraya intends to go there and claim the inheritance she didn't receive when the old man died. She submits her demand but the branch manager politely turns her down, telling her that all Palestinian accounts lapsed in 1948, so her grandfather's money no longer exists - it simply vanished sixty years ago.

Soraya loses this argument, but her private war is just beginning. Finding work in a Ramallah restaurant, she meets a young man named Emad, who has lived his whole life in Ramallah and plans on emigrating to Canada with a university scholarship when - and if - he can get a visa. Teaming up with him and his friend Marwan, who is less angry than Emad but just as restless, Soraya engineers an unconventional bank robbery, using guns but no bullets, since the Israeli police aren't armed and can't shoot back. What they take during the heist is even more unusual: the exact amount of Soraya's inheritance, plus interest, and not a shekel more. The bandits then drive to another part of Palestine, finding the lovely old house where Soraya's grandparents lived in bygone times. It now belongs to a young Israeli artist, who invites them in, treats them cordially, and says they can stay as long as they please; but this isn't enough for Soraya, who starts insisting that the house belongs to her because her grandparents lived there and her father would have grown up there if war and politics hadn't gotten in the way. Not surprisingly, the startled hostess throws Soraya and her friends out in a flash. On the road again, they travel toward the sea, uncertain what the future holds for them, or for the Palestinians and Israelis around them.

Writer-director Annemarie Jacir keeps the first half of Salt of This Sea moving at a lively clip, with few superfluous shots or pauses for breath. But she changes the pace after the robbery scene, relating events in a slower, more tentative way that reflects the uncertainty of the characters as to where they should go, what they should do, and what their goals should be. The story remains suspenseful and involving, though - every Israeli checkpoint is a threat to their freedom, and any encounter with someone they don't know could be a danger in disguise. Setting up residence in an abandoned structure in the countryside, for instance, Soraya and Emad wake up one morning to see a stranger gazing in at them and announcing that camping is forbidden in the area. He turns out to be a teacher accompanying a group of students on a tour of their historical homeland, but Soraya and Emad have to move on anyway, knowing that the next chance meeting might be far less benign. The end of the story is both conclusive and open-ended, suggesting that Soraya's quest is over for now but may have additional chapters to come.

Now available on DVD from Lorber Video, with excellent visual quality but unfortunately no extras, Salt of This Sea is well acted by a mixed cast of professionals and nonprofessionals. Soraya is played by Suheir Hammad, a first-time actress whose performance rings true even though her lack of experience leads her to make occasional awkward or unconvincing gestures. Emad is played by Saleh Bakri, a seasoned actor whose credits include The Band's Visit in 2007 and The Time That Remains in 2011. Marwan, the only other character with a fleshed-out personality, is played with low-key authenticity by Riyad Ideis, also a newcomer to acting. Their good work is even more impressive considering that this is the first fiction feature by Jacir, whose previous films have been shorts and documentaries. Salt of This Sea identifies her as a filmmaker with a future much brighter than the characters of this memorable drama can look forward to.

For more information about Salt of This Sea, visit Kino Lorber. To order Salt of This Sea, go to TCM Shopping.

by David Sterritt