Hopes and fears for the Palestinian serving five life sentences

Daniel Nelson

Tomorrow’s Freedom is the optimistic title of a new documentary about Palestine’s “Prince of Freedom” aka “Palestine’s Nelson Mandela”, Marwan Barghouthi.

A leader of two Intifadas and a proponent of a third, he’s been in jail 22 years, serving five life sentences plus 40 years for attempted murder. Were he released he would be a leading candidate for whichever top office was available in whatever constituted Palestine.

That alone gives the film topicality and significance.

His story is told through vivid newsreel shots and an array of talking heads (though most of the international testimonies emanate from dead or out-of-office politicians, perhaps a sign of how — until the recent Hamas attack — Israel had frozen any discussions about Palestine), but mainly through interviews with his family over a three-year period..

There’s so much to grieve in the footage of his life, though one particular moment of cruelty stands out for me: after a long period in which his wife, Fadwa, has been barred from visiting him in prison, she finally gets permission. Her journey, though endless checkpoints and humiliations, is a strain, to which is added the fearful uncertainty about his health after a lengthy hunger strike.  The next shot shows her travelling away from the prison, having been refused entry after a 12-hour wait. That is sadism.

Fadwa, a member of the Fatah council, is a tireless campaigner for her husband around the world, helping keep his name in the public eye, even in the face of Israel’s refusal to countenance a two-state policy or indeed any policy that acknowledges Palestinians’ existence.

The film by sisters Georgia and Sophia Scott (whose documentaries aim to “bring difficult and sensitive stories to viewers worldwide in a cinematic way”) is perhaps a little underweight on Barghouthi’s tactical shifts and the changes in his political thinking since his support for the Oslo peace accords in the 1990s (which many regard as an anrti-Palestinian stitch-up), but will help the campaign for his release. Israel hopes and Palestinians fear that Barghouthi will be forgotten and that lengthy incarceration will make him irrelevant. He’s 65 and no immediate end to his plight is discernible, though Hamas’ assault on Israel and the terrible backlash has forced the Palestinian issue back onto the table, albeit at enormous human cost.

Apart from shining a light on Barghouthi himself, says composer Brian Eno, the film’s executive producer, “the uniquely intimate access that the Scott sisters have been granted reveals not only the humanity of Marwan but also that of his wife and family; a normal loving family caught up in a cruel situation. 

“And, without ever labouring the point, this film gives us a real sense of what it is like to live under occupation: the constant checks, the surveillance, the military presence at every turn, the everyday injustices of an apartheid state.”

+ Tomorrow’s Freedom will be screened in UK cinemas from 26 April