Miral is a 2010 biographical political film directed by Julian Schnabel. The screenplay was written by Rula Jebreal, based on her novel. The film was released on 3 September at the 2010 Venice Film Festival^[1] and on 15 September 2010 in France. The film was set for release on 3 December 2010 in the United Kingdom,^{[2][dated info]} and on 25 March 2011 in the United States.^{[3][dated info]} Miral was initially rated R by the MPAA for "some violent content including a sexual assault." Later, however, it was reclassified to PG-13 for "thematic material, and some violent content including a sexual assault" after an appeal of the R rating by the Weinstein Company.^[4]

On April 4, 2011, days after the film's US release, Juliano Merr-Khamis, an actor and peace activist who plays Seikh Saabah in the film, was shot to death in his car outside a theatre he had established in a Palestinian refugee camp.^[5]

Plot[link]

A chronicle of Hind Husseini's effort to establish an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Deir Yassin Massacre,^[6][7] and the establishment of the state of Israel.^{[citation needed]}.

Jerusalem, 1948. On her way to work, Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) comes across 55 orphaned children in the street. She takes them home to give them food and shelter. Within six months, 55 had grown to almost 2,000, and the Dar Al-Tifel Institute was born.

In 1978, at the age of 5, Miral (Freida Pinto) was sent to the Institute by her father following her mother's death. Brought up safely inside the Institute's walls, she is naïve to the troubles that surround her. Then, in 1988, at the age of 15, she is assigned to teach at a refugee camp where she is awakened to the reality of the Palestinian refugees. When she falls for Hani, a militant, she finds herself torn between the First Intifada of her people and Mama Hind's belief that education is the road to peace.

Cast[link]

• Hiam Abbass as Hind al-Husseini
• Freida Pinto as Miral
• Yasmine Al Massri as Nadia
• Ruba Blal as Fatima
• Alexander Siddig as Jamal
• Omar Metwally as Hani
• Willem Dafoe as Eddie
• Vanessa Redgrave as Bertha Spafford
• Stella Schnabel as Lisa
• Makram Khoury as Khatib
• Doraid Liddawi as Sameer
• Shredi Jabarin as Ali

Production[link]

The Palestinian girl is author Rula Jebreal. Her novel on which the movie is based is a strongly autobiographical account of her youth in West Bank. She's torn between the injustice she sees at the hands of the Israeli army during the first Intifada and a desire for peace.^[8]

Schnabel revealed that the project had relevance for his own family history, figuring that he was a pretty good person to tell the other side of the story, given his background, as an American Jew whose mother was president, in 1948, of the Brooklyn chapter of Hadassah the Women's Zionist Organisation of America.^[9][10]

Reception[link]

Critics[link]

Miral received mostly negative reviews from critics, as it holds an 18% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 62 reviews.

Kelly Vance wrote that "Pinto handles the central role with a certain dignity, but the real drama is in Miral’s rejection of violence in favor of Hind Husseini’s (Abbass) example of education and negotiation".^[11]

Kenneth Morefield opined that "Miral is an ambitious film, and it may be that Schnabel's reputation has led to unrealistic expectations about what any film can (or should attempt to) accomplish. While it falls short of greatness, it has many admirable qualities".^[12]

Sheri Linden of The Los Angeles Times writes, "The lack of a compelling lead figure, combined with Schnabel's tentative approach to the material, casts the film's later stretches in the balmy glow of soap opera."^[13] Justin Chang of Variety similarly adds, "Schnabel's signature blend of splintered storytelling and sobering humanism feels misapplied to this sweeping multigenerational saga of four Arab women living under Israeli occupation, the youngest of which, Miral, emerges a bland totem of hope rather than a compelling movie subject."^[14]

Deborah Young of the Hollywood Reporter described the film as "a political film with a message of hope, on the obvious side".^[15]

Miral was reviewed by Geoffrey Macnab of The Independent as "choppily edited" and "unevenly performed" but also "courageous" and "groundbreaking." ^[16]

See also[link]

• Deir Yassin massacre
• Israeli Declaration of Independence
• 1948 Arab–Israeli War

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Miral at the Internet Movie Database
• Miral at AllRovi
• Miral at Box Office Mojo
• Miral at Metacritic
• Miral at Pathé
• Miral at Rotten Tomatoes
• Columnist Ray Hanania on the importance of the film

Freida Pinto
Pinto at the 65th Annual Cannes Film Festival.
Born	Freida Selena Pinto (1984-10-18) 18 October 1984 (age 27) Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Actress, model
Years active	2006–present

Freida Selena Pinto^[1] (born 18 October 1984) is an Indian actress and model best known for her portrayal of Latika in the 2008 Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. After the success of the film she went on to star in the films such as You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Miral—in which she played the title character—and the box-office hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Early life[link]

Pinto was born into a Mangalorean Catholic family in Mumbai,^[2][3][4] which she still refers to as Bombay out of habit.^[5] Her surname is of Portuguese origin as the result of her ancestors' conversion to Catholicism by missionaries.^[6][7] Her mother, Sylvia, is the principal of St. John's Universal High School (Goregaon), and her father, Frederick, is a senior branch manager at the Bank of Baroda. She has an elder sister, Sharon, who is an associate producer for the NDTV news channel.^[8] Pinto dreamed of becoming an actress since she was five years old.^[9] When Freida was ten, Sushmita Sen won Miss Universe 1994, which turned out to be a defining point in Freida's life.^[2] She studied at Carmel of St. Joseph School in Malad, Mumbai and completed a degree in arts with a major in English Literature, and minors in Psychology and Economics, from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai.^[9][10][11] She had also acted in plays and amateur theatre while attending St. Xavier's.^[2] She later joined Elite Model Management and modelled for two and a half years.^[9]

Acting career[link]

Pinto at the 2010 International Film Festival of India.

Before starring in Slumdog Millionaire, Pinto anchored the international travel show, Full Circle, on Zee International Asia Pacific in English between 2006–08. Pinto was also featured in several television and print advertisements for products such as Wrigley's Chewing Gum, Škoda, Vodafone India, Airtel, and DeBeers. Pinto modelled for four years and appeared in runway shows and magazine covers.^[8] She learned acting from The Barry John's Acting Studio in Andheri and was trained by theatre director Barry John.^[12][13] After six months of auditions, she received a call to audition for Slumdog Millionaire. Pinto auditioned for Danny Boyle and was short-listed and finally selected to star in Slumdog Millionaire.^[10]

Pinto made her feature film debut in 2008 in Slumdog Millionaire playing the role of Latika, the girl with whom Jamal (Dev Patel) is in love. At the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, the movie won the Cadillac People's Choice Award.^[14] At the 2009 Golden Globe Awards, the movie won four awards. Pinto herself was nominated for "Best Actress in a Supporting Role" at the 2009 BAFTA Awards,^[15] She won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture alongside other cast members from Slumdog Millionaire.^[16]

Pinto co-starred in Woody Allen's comedy-drama film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, with Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Anupam Kher and Naomi Watts, which premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.^[17] Pinto appeared in the 2011 science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot of the Planet of the Apes series, opposite James Franco. She played Caroline, a primatologist, in the film. She also appeared in the 2011 fantasy-action-drama film, Immortals, in which she played the oracle priestess Phaedra.^[18] Also in 2011, she played Princess Lailah in the 1930s set Black Gold.^[19]

Other work[link]

Pinto has joined Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf to support their philanthropic organisation "Agassi Foundation". She is the only Indian actress to have participated in their annual fund raiser titled, "The 15th Grand Slam for Children", that aims at raising funds for education of underprivileged children.^[20]

Personal life[link]

Pinto was engaged to her former publicist Rohan Antao, before calling it off in January 2009.^[21] She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend, Slumdog Millionaire co-star Dev Patel.^[22]

Popular reception[link]

Pinto is featured in People magazine's "Most Beautiful People List",^[23] and "List of World's Best Dressed Women".^[24] She was also featured in the "Top 99 Most Desirable Women" poll conducted by Askmen.com in 2010.^[25] According to The Daily Telegraph, she is currently the highest paid Indian actress (she is not considered a Bollywood star as she never appeared in a Bollywood film).^[26] She has also been listed in the top ten list of the fashion magazine Vogue's 2009 annual list of the most stylish women.^[27] On 13 May 2009, Pinto became a new spokesmodel for L'Oréal.^[28] People named her one of 2012 Most Beautiful at Every Age.^[29]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Freida Pinto

• Freida Pinto at the Internet Movie Database

Julian Schnabel
Schnabel at the 2010 Hamptons International Film Festival
Born	(1951-10-26) October 26, 1951 (age 60) Brooklyn, New York, USA
Nationality	American
Field	Painting, Film
Training	University of Houston, Houston
Movement	Neo-expressionism

Julian Schnabel (born October 26, 1951) is an American artist and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates.

Schnabel directed Before Night Falls, which became Javier Bardem's breakthrough Academy Award nominated role and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was nominated for four Academy Awards.

He has won a Golden Globe, as well as BAFTA, a César Award, a Golden Palm, two nominations for the Golden Lion and an Academy Award nomination.

Early life and education[link]

Born in Brooklyn, New York City to Esta Greenberg and Jack Schnabel.^[1] Schnabel moved with his family to Brownsville, Texas when still young.^[2] It was in Brownsville that he spent most of his formative years and where he took up surfing and resolved to be an artist.^[3] He is from a Jewish background and his mother was president in 1948 of the Brooklyn chapter of Hadassah, a religious Women's Zionist Organization in America.^[4]

He received his B.F.A. at the University of Houston. After graduating, he sent an application to the independent study program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His application included slides of his work sandwiched between two pieces of bread. He was admitted into the program.^[2] Schnabel worked as a short-order cook and frequented Max's Kansas City, a restaurant-nightclub, while he worked on his art. In 1975, Schnabel had his first solo show at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Over the next few years he traveled frequently to Europe, where he was enormously impressed by the work of Antoni Gaudi, Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys.

Art[link]

It was with his first solo show, at the Mary Boone Gallery in 1979, however, that Schnabel would truly come to be regarded^{[by whom?]} as a major new force in the art world. He participated at the Venice Biennale in 1980, and by the mid-1980s had become a major figure in the Neo-expressionism movement. By the time he exhibited his work in a show jointly organized by Boone and Leo Castelli in 1981, he had become firmly established. His now famous "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates—received a boisterous and critical reception from the art world. A reputation for making brash pronouncements about his importance to the art world - I'm the closest thing to Picasso that you'll see in this *#@ life - engendered contempt from both colleagues and the viewing public. Schnabel is currently represented by The Pace Gallery in New York.

Schnabel's signature works contain an underlying edge of brutality, while remaining suffused with compositional energy. Schnabel claims that he's aiming at an emotional state, a state that people can literally walk into and be engulfed.

Schnabel insists he is a painter first and foremost, though he is better known for his films.

In 2011 Museo Correr exhibited Julian Schnabel: Permanently Becoming and the Architecture of Seeing, a selected survey show of Schnabel's career curated by Norman Rosenthal.^[6]

Museum collections[link]

His works are in the collections of various museums throughout the world, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art in New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Reina Sofia in Madrid; Tate Modern in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Schnabel recently had an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, which ran from September 1, 2010 to January 2, 2011 and occupied the entirety of the gallery's fifth floor. It examined "the rich interplay between [Schnabel's paintings and films]".^[7].

Directing[link]

Schnabel with Rula Jebreal and Freida Pinto in October 2010

In addition to his work as an artist, Schnabel has written and directed the films Basquiat, a biopic on the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (1996), and Before Night Falls (2000), an adaptation of Reinaldo Arenas' autobiographical novel, which he also produced. He directed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), an adaptation (with a screenplay by Ronald Harwood) of a French memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly earned him the award for best director at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival,^[8] the Golden Globe for best director, the Independent Spirit Award for best director, and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director. Schnabel, who designed Lou Reed's critically acclaimed 'Berlin' Tour in 2007, also released 'Berlin the Movie'.^[9] Despite the fact that producing The Diving Bell and the Butterfly might seem like a commission to do someone else's work, Schnabel took on the film. According to Schnabel,

His latest film Miral was shot in Jerusalem in 2009.

Writing and recording[link]

Schnabel published his autobiography CVJ: Nicknames of Maitre D's & Other Excerpts From Life (Random House, New York), in 1987 and released the album Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud on Island Records (Catalog #314-524 111-2) in 1995. Recorded in Brooklyn, New York in 1993, the album features guest musicians including Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell, Buckethead, and Nicky Skopelitis.

Personal life[link]

Schnabel lives in New York, maintaining studios in New York City and in Montauk on the eastern end of Long Island with a house in San Sebastián in Spain.^[3] He has three children by his first wife, clothing designer Jacqueline Beaurang: two daughters, Lola, a painter and film-maker, Stella, a poet and actress, and a son, Vito, an art dealer.^[11]

He also has twin sons, Cy and Olmo, by his second wife, Spanish Basque actress Olatz López Garmendia. Garmendia appeared in Before Night Falls, and is also to be seen in The Diving Bell, as Bauby's physical therapist.^[3] Schnabel is fluent in Spanish.^{[citation needed]} He also learned French to direct The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

His collaboration with Rula Jebreal, who penned the screenplay and original source novel for Schnabel's film Miral, extended beyond the movie. Schnabel was in relationship with her from 2007 to June 2011.^[12][13]

Schnabel resides at 360 West 11th Street, in a former West Village horse stable that he purchased and converted for residential use, adding five luxury condominiums in the style of a Northern Italian palazzo. It is named the Palazzo Chupi and it's easy to spot because it is painted pink.^[14]

Filmography[link]

• Basquiat (1996)
• Before Night Falls (2000)
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
• Lou Reed's Berlin (2007)
• Miral (2010)

See also[link]

• Bruno Bischofberger
• List of artists who created paintings and drawings for use in films
• Curley, Mallory. A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia, Randy Press (2010)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Julian Schnabel's art work at Robilant + Voena
• Julian Schnabel on Charlie Rose
• Julian Schnabel at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Julian Schnabel in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Rula Jebreal
Jebreal in October 2010.
Born	April 24, 1973 Haifa, Israel
Alma mater	University of Bologna
Occupation	Journalist, commentator, author
Website
Official Website

Rula Jebreal (Arabic: رولا جبريل) (born on April 24, 1973 in Haifa, Israel) is an Italo-Palestinian journalist^[1][2] novelist, and screenwriter with both Israeli^[3] and Italian citizenship.

Life[link]

She grew up in Jerusalem. Jebreal's father worked as a groundskeeper at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Her mother died^[4] when she was 5.^[5] She and her sister Rania were put into the Dar El-Tifel orphanage by their father^[4][5] in 1978 until 1991. She was educated in the orphanage, and then received a scholarship from the Italian government to study medicine at the University of Bologna, where she graduated with a degree in physiotherapy. She worked as a physiotherapist while she went back to the University of Bologna and earned her masters in Journalism and Political Science.

Jebreal became the first foreign anchorwoman in the history of Italian television, winning a Media Watch award for her coverage of the Iraq War, and by age 33 earned the highest journalism award, the International Ischia Award for Best Journalist of the Year. Jebreal worked as a journalist in Italy for twelve years, earning a reputation for being one of the toughest interviewers for her interviews with such figures as Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema, Silvio Berlusconi, Bill Gates, President Abu Mazen, Bernard Kouchner, Mohammed ElBaradei, and Ingrid Betancourt. In 2006 she became the co-presenter of Anno Zero, the most important and controversial political television show in Italy, together with Michele Santoro. In 2008 Jebreal created her own television show in Cairo at Al-Qahira Wal-Nas, (Cairo Centric) television station, where she filmed 30 episodes covering politics, economy, and the collapse of society in Egypt under the Mubarrak regime.^[6]

Jebreal's first novel Miral, written in 2003, was translated into 15 languages, selling millions of copies worldwide, and was eventually made into a film that was directed by Julian Schnabel, from Jebreal's screenplay.^[7][8][2][4] The movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2010 to a 15 minute standing ovation, and won the Unicef Protection of Children award.^[9] Miral held its U.S. premiere at the United Nations General Assembly Hall on March 14, 2011.^[10] Miral was the first film ever to have a premiere at the General Assembly Hall.

Jebreal's 2nd novel The Bride of Aswan was published in 2007, and was translated into five languages, winning the International Fince Europa Award. Her third book, Rejected, is a non-fiction study about the history of immigration in Europe. It was published in Italy and France, and is used in universities in Italy.

As a filmmaker, Jebreal wrote and produced a documentary titled Permesso di Soggiorno about the death penalty in China, the United States and Iran during the United Nations debate over the death penalty moratorium in 2008. The critically acclaimed documentary aired on Italian television in 2008.

She has a teenaged daughter, named Miral, whose father is an Italian artist.^[7]

She is fluent in five languages: Italian, English, Arabic, Hebrew, and German.

Works[link]

Rula Jebreal and Julian Schnabel, 2010

• La strada dei fiori di Miral, BUR Biblioteca Univ. Rizzoli, 2005, ISBN 978-88-17-00850-1
  • Miral. Translator John Cullen. Penguin. 2010. ISBN 978-0-14-311619-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=NZzdA2vfXUYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=miral&hl=en&ei=B-dGTcXML4iq8Aa8wvzaAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
  • Ørkenblomsten, Engelstad forl., 2005, ISBN 978-82-92533-10-9
  • Miral – Ein Land. Drei Frauen. Ein gemeinsamer Traum, Translated Leon Mengden, Btb, 2010, ISBN 978-3-442-74148-9
• La sposa di Assuan, (Bride of Aswan) Rizzoli, 2005, ISBN 978-88-17-00867-9
  • La promise d'Assouan, Translated Lucie Comparini, Altal éd., 2007, ISBN 978-2-916736-04-4
  • A esposa de Assuão, Campo das Letras, 2007, ISBN 978-989-625-237-3
• Divieto di soggiorno: l'Italia vista con gli occhi dei suoi immigrati, (Rejected) Milan, Italy: Rizzoli, 2007, ISBN 978-88-17-01270-6

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rula Jebreal

• Author's website
• Rula Jebreal at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Rula Jebreal in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Interviews

• Rula Jebreal on Charlie Rose
• "Rula Jebreal (Miral) Interview", Tribute, Ola Sturik, Toronto International Film Festival, September 14, 2010
• "Rula Jebreal on Her Novel, Miral", WNYC, December 13, 2010
• "Interview: Rula Jebreal on the struggle to make "Miral" a film", Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, 22 March 2011

Articles

• "Rula Jebreal", collected articles at Radyoheval (Italian)
• "Palestinian broadcaster in Italy, Rula Jebreal, enjoys increasing acclaim". Haaretz. 11 December 2008. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1045888.html. Retrieved 24 March 2011. 
• "Rula’s View", Vogue, Dodie Kazanjian, October 31, 2010
• "Extra | Rula Jebreal, Miral", AnOther, December 6, 2010
• Lydia Martin (January 13, 2011). "Julian Schnabel falls for Palestinian tale, then for its writer". McClatchy Newspapers. http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/movies/articles/2011/01/13/20110113julian-schnabel-rula-jebreal-miral.html. 

Book review

• "Book Review: Rula Jebreal’s Miral", Muslimah Media Watch, January 20, 2011