New Film Spotlights Palestinian Women Navigating Life 'In Between' Cultures
Maysaloun Hamoud's In Between highlights the challenges young Palestinian women face in Israel as they try to live amid contradictory expectations. Hamoud has received death threats since its release.
Filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud does not like being typecast.
"The Israelis say, you don't look Arab or Palestinian," she says, rolling her eyes. "Huh? If I wear a dress or outfit that [doesn't look] religious, I cannot be a Palestinian? I have to be, like, exactly how you design me?"
Hamoud is 35, wearing a long skirt, tank top and rose-tinted sunglasses. The title of her acclaimed and controversial film Bar Bahar — or In Between in English — is tattooed in Arabic and English on her right forearm.
We meet at a cafe near her home in the seaside port of Jaffa, next to Tel Aviv. She's hugging her pet Siberian Husky.
