Product Description

Official Selection! - 2002 Cannes Film Festival
Winner! - Nestor Almendros Prize, 2003 Human Rights Watch Film Festival
Winner! - Best Actress, Clara Khoury, Marrakech Film Festival

Shooting on location in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad (Academy Award® nominee, Paradise Now) offers a romantic and compelling portrait of love under occupation and everyday life turned upside down. When Rana (Clara Khoury) is faced with an ultimatum - choose a husband from a list of eligible, respectable men or leave for Egypt - she goes searching for a lover of her own choosing. Moving across checkpoints to the West Bank, finding a wedding dress in a war zone, and settling family differences all in just ten hours, Rana finds. . . in Jerusalem, love has many roadblocks.

In Arabic with English Subtitles

DVD Features:

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36842 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-12-11
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Arabic, English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 86 minutes

-Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"Fascinating. It gives a more complete visual picture. . . than we ever see on the news."

-Phil Hall, Film Threat
"Among the finest films made in the Middle East."

-V.A. Musetto, New York Post
"A small gem."

Customer Reviews

The hectic ordeal of a wedding
PREPARING FOR A wedding is a hectic ordeal anywhere in the world. In the film "Rana's Wedding," however, the bride's situation is even more complicated than most. She awakes from her bed in East Jerusalem with an ultimatum from her father to either marry one of the up-and-coming eligible bachelors who have asked for her hand from a list he has given her, or accompanying him to Egypt--and he wants her decision by four that afternoon. But Rana has other ideas. She sets out to find her true love, Khalil, a struggling theater company director in near-by Ramallah, persuade him to propose, find the registrar, have her father accept her beloved and then marry--all by the 4 p.m. deadline. Because her life is constrained at every turn by the Israeli military occupation, Rana's task is a journey of epic proportion.
Palestinian novelist Liana Badr wrote the screenplay, along with Ihab Lamey, based on her own trials and tribulations in order to marry the Palestinian politician Yasser Abd Rabbih. The film's Palestinian director, Hany Abu-Assad, whose later "Paradise Now" was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign film, carefully shows us the daily life of those living under occupation. As they watch a Palestinian home being demolished by an Israeli bulldozer, Rana tells a friend, "They are destroying homes as I am trying to build one."
Through it all Rana (played with quiet resolve by Palestinian Clara Khoury) is determined to succeed. Even though at times she is disappointed and despairing, Rana presses on--not unlike the people of Palestine.

I felt I was witnessing the events*
When the movie first started I thought it would be another young lady trying to run away from home to marry her no good lover. However, the plot was slightly different and very touching. I won't say too much about it but it feels like you're going through the same emotions as Rana* (Clara Khoury). Really great film, it capture todays events but doesn't lose sight of what the film is REALLY about.

Average movie with interesting locales.
This is a fairly typical Palestinian movie that explores the issues of barriers that keep people apart and that keep people from living a "normal" life. In this case, Rana, young Palestinian woman finds herself facing an arranged marriage in Egypt because she has not chosen an acceptable man from a list her father has given her. Her father has told her that if she isn't married by 4:00 he will take her to Egypt. The movie covers her day as she tries to avoid this situation. Her strategy is to find her boyfriend and convince him to get married. At first she cannot find him and then there are a number of obstacles to overcome and swings in emotion. Most people will probably enjoy this movie because it shows the main characters moving around the streets of Jerusalem so you get to see a number of scenes you might not normally see in the news. It also shows some of the little struggles Palestinians go through. When all is said and done the ending is fairly happy but the message is sort of political, even though part of the conflict comes from social expectations.

The movie has sort of a sad and depressed tone most of the time and kind of an odd brown-yellowish tint which sort of adds to the feeling of exasperation. This is an interesting film, if not an uplifting one. The main character has appeared in another well-known film as a bride (The Syrian Bride) so it seems a little odd to see her in somewhat of a similar role here, but the movie is worth checking out.