Bab El Shams, or The Gate of the Sun in English, is an epic tale about a resistance fighter during the Nakba, yet it’s fundamentally a film about a rare and enduring kind of love. This love transcends distance, slowly transforming into a homeland for Younes and Nahila in the Bab El Shams cave. This contrasts sharply with the contemporary, turbulent physical relationship between Khalil and Shams.

Elias Khoury’s novel is the most significant about the Nakba, weaving a complex narrative from oral history. The film adaptation captures this loving essence beautifully, even in scenes of displacement. When Umm Hassan visits her home, we see her connection to her garden and oranges. Her main feeling is not hatred for the settler but nostalgia and alienation. This prompts the settler, who is of Arab origin, to confess her own feelings of longing. When Umm Hassan decorates a wall with oranges she brought back, Younes rejects the fleeting symbolism. They eat the oranges because they are the oranges of Palestine, and they are Palestine. — MAMDOUH SALAH ALI