Palestinian portrait of offices and Occupation

Daniel Nelson

Local government “is the most beautiful field of work in our country.”

Can you really make an interesting documentary from that idea?

You can if the local government is that of Ramallah, the country is Palestine, and the film is Mayor.

It’s a comedy, a tragedy, a thriller, a poignant political statement. It doesn’t tell you much about the reserved and dignified Mayor Musa Hadid (perhaps there’s no more to him than meets the eye, though it would be interesting to know how he got the job), but by following him around, in and out of meetings and onto a few streets, the camera gives us an unexpected glimpse of life in the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority.

Many of the local government fly-on-the-wall moments seem like an amalgam of TV comedies Yes Minister, The Office and Twenty Twelve, the fictional BBC series about planning the Olympics. At first I feared the tone would be mocking, even sneering, but the sincerity of both Hadad and director David Osit triumphs, especially when you get a whiff of the odds they are up against.

The low-key tone is pitch perfect as the film records the parochial concerns over the functioning of the fountain outside city hall (“Let’s give it a name before the people do”), the timing of a bunch of Santas abseiling into a Christmas celebration, the attempt to deal with city rubbish, sewage, burials and construction (“But that’s a woman’s bathroom!”), a dialogue of the deaf with visiting German MPs. In a few casual seconds an office discussion about the city’s branding nails the canyon-sized gap between international ambition and local vision.

Osit must have been smiling when he captured those moments. But it must have been a director’s dream come true when the Mayor is told, “There’s going to be a big announcement today.”

The announcement was of US President Donald Trump’s decision to transfer the US embassy to nearby – but largely inaccessible – Jerusalem.

The immediate sense of mayoral foreboding (“It’s about to be chaos here”) rapidly turns into reality, as Israeli troops crash into the helpless city, and the fountain, the Mayor’s pride and joy, becomes a battleground.

It’s a brutal illustration of where power lies and why the city and its cautious mayor – who rises to the occasion with bravery and political honesty – are so constrained: “Every year, same chaos, same story.”

Modest it may be, only skimming the surface of a bizarre geopolitical anomaly, but the film reveals a lot.

* ‘Mayor’ goes on sale on 1 January 2021, £9.99. Info: https://watch.dogwoof.com/film/mayor/